audio test jdv
by Hankton
Summary: narration test
1. c 1-1

Chapter 1: Death and Satori

What follows is an account of how I came to pass, and the origin of some talents I possess. For those uninterested, you may skip on.

Dying is a horrible experience, and dying slowly is worse. I was neither young nor old when it came, and it was no surprise. I had an inoperable brain tumor, a slow but inevitable death sentence hanging over my head from a fairly young age. I didn't accept it, of course. It was my dream, my ambition to live forever; not out of fear of death, but love of life.

Life is just so interesting. There is so much to experience. And people are always creating new and interesting things to continue experiencing. Whenever I would read of immortals (all too often those damned vampires common in pulp teen novels) who lamented their ability to live forever, to keep experiencing new and interesting things, I would always think then you have never truly lived in the first place.

I had a fairly excellent life: a loving family, with two siblings and dogs, enough money for whatever luxuries or hobbies we really wanted, well traveled, and the winner of a genetic lottery that left me both physically fit and with an intelligence great enough to pursue whatever I wanted. And from a young age, that pursuit was magic.

Lacking magic on Earth though, I settled for martial arts, science, and stories.

I suppose part of my thoughts on immortality may be because of my interests: technology and stories and martial arts at the forefront, followed by a general love of information, the human condition, history and what shaped it. All of these things I adore. And all of these things are in constant flux, constant development. As a child of the new millennium, I knew these things would always be there for me; I could, and wanted to, search for perfection for a thousand years, and a thousand more in these things, and still there would be more to learn and improve. I had no need for a heaven, as I saw its potential on Earth.

My love of technology led me to authors like Kurzweil, who gave me the idea that an immortal life is not just possible at some distant point in the future, but potentially possible for those of my generation. I did all the right things. I slept right, ate an organic diet high in vegetables and low in red meat (generally unhealthy) and fish (some is ok, but many have heavy metals), took the perfect balance of vitamins and minerals and supplements, didn't drink or smoke. I meditated and practiced martial arts, partially out of preference and partially for health. I practiced a low-risk lifestyle as well; over an eternity, small risks add up, and I wanted to go into things with the right habits.

So, for me who loved life, for me who made a temple of my body, for me who loved above all else my mind, a slow progressive brain death was horrifying. I had several bouts of active tumor growth before it would slow or stop, losing mental ability and physical control each time. Each time, I clawed my way back, practicing meditation to regain focus, kata to regain strength, basic math and word games with family and friends to regain cognitive function; my efforts paid off, and I kept falling into an extremely rare number of people capable of recovering from such incidences.

And, though this crucible damaged my body, there were benefits for my soul. Before any of this, I had always been a bit aloof. Not because I disdained others, but because it was very difficult to empathize on anything other than an academic fashion. I didn't understand why someone might need a calculator to give the square root of any number less than a thousand (well, at least to three sig figs), or why others would miss things that were perfectly obvious if they just looked at the problem correctly. I knew I was physically capable in most scenarios, and mentally capable in any where I understood the underlying concepts. Further, I was somewhat divorced from my emotions. I had them, cherished them, but also refused to allow them any control. And so, I came off as somewhat arrogant, and at times condescending.

The illness changed that, to a greater extent. My mind and physical control shot to hell, my emotions highly variable, my feelings intense in a way they had not been before, I went through all the stages of childhood development all over again on my way to improve myself to what I considered an acceptable standard. I understood others far better. And, most important, my meditation yielded some very interesting results.

I had been interested in hypnosis and meditation from a young age. Here was a type of magic that did not use magic. I meditated, of course, for martial arts. Hypnosis, NLP, and other such topic I found somewhat fascinating, and I would pour over the works of people like Derren Brown, reading and watching the analysis posts of others online, going so far as to practice some basic tricks on other students at school. I myself practiced a combination of meditation and self-hypnosis following some training-related spine injuries as a pain reduction technique as I abhorred the concept of pain killers unless absolutely necessary.

The levels of meditation needed to deal with something like brain damage though, that forced me onto a different level.

I spent several hours, every day, meditating to keep control of my body and mind. When my reaction to crowds decreased sufficiently for me to be out in public, I used walking-meditation techniques to deal with the influx of new information. It was during the onset of this whole mess, several months in, that I first experienced Kensho, a fleeting momentary glimpse of self, the very first step towards enlightenment. It was, to be honest, somewhat addicting, terrifying, humbling, and exalting.

I was hooked, and tried for months to recreate the feeling; it would not come. The very act of trying to achieve it, having in mind as a possibility while meditating, made it impossible; I would not find it again until years later. Irritated, I turned to other, similar pursuits, mostly focused on the intersection of meditation and self-hypnosis.

Hypnotists in the past could have ordinary people stiffen their muscles so hard that they could be suspended across two chairs, feet on one, hands on the other, and walked across. This is not some lost secret either; merely, it turns out that after being brought out of the hypnotic state, the subject tends to have muscle damage, ranging from mild to severe, and possible joint and tendon damage as well. Houdini was supposed to use a similar technique on his own stomach muscles to resist the blows of even heavyweight boxers.

Interested, and having made my own initial forays into sustained meditation, self-hypnosis for pain reduction, and ki type manipulation (a combination of meditation and self-hypnosis, I believed), I began to practice. Eventually, I was able to surpass my own limitations. At first, I was able to focus, and punch fast enough that the speed was slightly painful to my body, even with my well-conditioned and flexible muscles and joints. Eventually, while working out with a friend of mine who was on leave from the US Marine Corps (and who had a perfect 100% on his physical fitness test), I used these techniques to keep up at least somewhat with my own much nerdier physique; I ended up with so many micro-tears in my arms, I was unable to move them for nearly a month. I was lucky I didn't injure myself more severely.

Somewhat less focused on these techniques after my brush with causing lasting physical damage to myself, I continued practice on and off, more maintaining my potential than increasing my talents, focused on my job as a researcher. At one point, I decided to try a deep meditation again; I fasted three days, meditating all the while. On the third day, once again, I achieved a brief moment of Kensho. This time, that was enough, and I went back to my work and life revitalized. Eventually though, all good things came to an end; I had a vicious resurgence of my illness.

This time, the damned thing would not stop. I was given a month to live. I quit work, moved home, spent some time with my family, came up with a perfect diet with Mom, and began to meditate like never before. At first, I would spend eight hours a day in meditation, another four on martial arts. As time progressed, and that first month came to a close, I was cleaner in mind and body than I had ever been before, and meditating close to 16 hours a day. The new MRI showed a much slower progression than feared, but that I was still getting worse.

A second month passed. I had achieved Kensho another two times. I was conscious enough of my body to know I was still getting worse, as was verified by the doctors. Near the beginning of the third month, I achieved Kensho once more, and in that moment of clarity I knew, this body of mine was doomed.

But, in that moment of clarity, I had a thought; I saw a possibility. Normally, the mind, the body, the spirit, are linked but somewhat separate. I saw the possibility though of changing that. While I may not be able to live forever, I was maintaining my mind, my self, through sheer focus and will at this point. With some more focus, some more will, I might be able to change things, to link mind so that it depends solely on spirit. And so, achieve a kind of immortality in reincarnation.

This was a gamble; I was wise enough even then to know I may be practicing self delusion, that this may all be a product of self-hypnosis rather than an actual, spiritual enlightenment. Further, I was gambling on reincarnation, and that my own enlightenment would be enough.

Though, let me make clear: I was not interested in Buddha-hood. I had no desire to transcend humanity entirely until I was finished experiencing what it had to offer. Nor was I arrogant enough to think I could achieve it, certainly not in the moments I had left to me. I had no desire for the final enlightenment of Daigo, but needed the persistent insight I thought of as Satori rather than a mere moment from Kensho. And so I prepared. In a symbolic step-back from the flesh, I went entirely vegan.

By the end of the third month, I was close. Close to the unison-of-mind-and-spirit. Closer to death. There was no point in an MRI, not for me, though I agreed that the doctors could have my body once the heart stopped beating. I made my goodbyes. I went into my meditation room, an empty, white walled space with wood floor attached to a restroom, bringing fourteen pitchers of water and a glass.

I sat, and meditated, and drank water when I felt it necessary. The moments of Kensho became somewhat less impactful, but more and more common, the distance between me and Satori vanishingly thin. I lost track of time, was only drinking now what I perspired, my body devoid of toxins, my mind and spirit the same.

I felt that I could abandon self, that I could become one with the world. But that was not my goal. Instead, drawing on everything I knew and had practiced, I reinforced it. My Mind, My Spirit, My Self. This was my mantra. I experienced the world, but I was not the world. Not yet. One day, perhaps. But for that moment, my mind was my spirit, and my spirit my mind. To be honest, I am not sure if this revelation, this Satori of insight on how to maintain identity through death, came while I was alive, or dying, or only just dead.

I vaguely remember the experience of something trying to take that-which-was-dark, and when I held on to my darkness, to take me, but I refused. I was not dark, though I possessed darkness, and thus that-which-consumes-the-dark may not consume me. Something tried to take that-which-was-light; again, I refused to surrender my light, and was not light myself.

There was the potential to become-that-which-you-may-be, but my self was that of a human, which I already was; I had no need to become what I already was. And, lastly, there was the call-to-be-at-peace-with-all.

This, I remember most. Perhaps, it was the strongest call, especially for me, who had struggled so long. Perhaps, it was the weakest call, especially for me, who had spent so many hours of meditation, fighting this peace to make my mind part of the identity of my spirit.

Then, for an age, there was merely nothing, the rare sensation of movement, perhaps a faintly heard noise. After, I believe this to have been the womb, with my spirit entered into my new body. At the time, especially at first, I was somewhat freaked out, worried that I had resisted the possible avenues of death and thus been consigned to the void. But my illness had not broken me, and death had not broken me, so neither, I resolved, would this new void. I continued my meditations, continued reviewing my memories of my past and making dreams for the future.

The experiences of the dead, and the spirits, and the different-from-human, are not part of the human experience, and thus are lost to one that holds onto humanity. I remember those poorly, though there are some fleeting concepts I still held onto, as I have related. Their validity, how they might be psychic constructs to make sense of a greater experience, or merely the last gasp of a dying mind, all these are things I did not and do not know. Nor are human minds and spirits, which I had focused so dearly on maintaining, meant to function well without a body to provide the processing of thoughts. I can only report on fragmented memories, and how I have reconstructed them.

All I know, is that my efforts worked.

I maintained my mind and self as part of my spirit.

I avoided the Paths of the Dead.

As I lived, I would live again.

And so it was.

Chapter 2: A New Life, and New Challenges

Being conscious as a fetus, and especially during birth, was not an experience I am fond of remembering. I do not advise it, and will speak not much more of it than to say that it was months of tedium, through which I struggled mightily to maintain my mind. As one may imagine, I spent much of this time in meditation, going over my previous life. I was not fully conscious of the fact that I was alive again until after the birthing process, an explosion of noise and light and sensation and pain.

Being a baby was itself confusing. To begin, babies are functionally blind. Their brains do not yet know which nerves control which motions. Their muscles are further too weak to do anything but turn their head.

It took me days, perhaps weeks to realize what was going on, weeks more to have any sort of controlled motion, months to build the muscles necessary to crawl, further weeks to have the balance to stand and walk. As a baby, emotions and body are unstable; think puberty but a hundred times more intense, and then remember that the baby brain is forming and developing too. It was far too similar to my illness for my tastes, and I wanted it over with as soon as possible.

Luckily, I was male. I wouldn't want to deal with gender confusion on top of everything else. Soon enough I learned my name: Daichi, or great wisdom. My parents picked well.

During this time, I had four other focuses beyond existing and experiencing infant-hood. The first was learning the language, which sounded similar to Japanese; though as I did not speak Japanese, I could not tell how linguistically similar they were. I would by carried about by 'Kaa-san much of the time, and whenever I wasn't obsessed with playing with her red hair (surprisingly distracting for a child), I would point and squawk at objects as we passed, getting her to name them. I endeavored to learn the language as quickly as possible. Eventually, I learned my parents' names: Kohaku was Tou-san's name, Kohaku Uzumaki. He was named after amber for his hair color, which apparently as a kid was more orange than red. Kaa-san's name was Tomomi.

The second focus was on my mind. A developing brain is a very interesting thing. Depending on how you focus your time and effort, combined with natural inclination, neural-plasticity leads to the formation of specialized thought capacity. Having babies, and even young children, do a lot of math, for example, will make them more likely to be good at it, especially faster at it, so long as they associate the math with good things. I was, of course, focused on making my brain as sharp as it could be; my identity, the essence of my mind and self, may have been linked to the soul, but the processing speed and power was definitely at least partially physical.

The third focus was on my spirit. I wanted to make sure that I did the necessary maintenance keeping mind and spirit linked. Infant mortality, especially in this relatively low-tech world I seemed to have found myself in, was definitely a thing, and I want to ensure that if the worst happened, I would once again be reborn in my full capacity. During this, and the associated meditations on my body, I found something interesting.

And this interesting thing leads into the fourth focus; my internal energy. I discovered that my ki there in that new land was much more real than in my previous life. On Earth, it was, at least as I thought, a way of envisioning and having a semi-conscious control over normal biological processes. On Chakyu, my new planet, it was the same, except there was this greater energy to it, and it was far easier to move and use.

After some months of focus, I realized this energy had its own circulatory system, and seemed to have a color to it too: a dark blue in the pool near my navel, the traditional seat of physical energies (ki), a pale silver in the well near my forehead, presumably my mental/spiritual energies (chi), and a rather nice sky blue near my heart where they mixed (chakra).

This gave me ideas. Back before, I had read a number of stories with chakra-based magic systems, including Naruto. I hypothesized that in such a system, there would be five important attributes to someone's chakra: how much chakra you have (volume), how potent your chakra is (density), how quickly you can release the chakra (flow), how finely you can manipulate the chakra (control), and how quickly it recharged (vitality). While all of these are somewhat inherent, all can also be trained like muscles, especially if the chakra system has a circulatory system attached. And so, I began my chakra control exercises.

The main exercises I focused on were internal techniques effective in increasing volume, density, control, internal flow, and vitality. The small points on my skin where chakra could escape kind of freaked me out, and I decided not to experiment with those without a bit of advice and more knowledge. What I could do, was the following.

First, I spent days meditating solely on my own chakra flows. Once I had a decent understanding, the next step was the first of the exercises. I would compress my internal chakra, making it denser, then form it into little balls that were slightly larger than the channels, increasing volume a bit, as well as control, and significantly increasing flow. I would then focus on moving these balls through my chakra system as quickly as possible while maintaining coherency, further improving flow and control. Vitality would come into it as my body would have to replace the low-density areas left behind by increasing my chakra density. As a second exercise, I would focus on making the chakra in my ki-pool and chi-well denser, then shaping it against the sides of the pool or well, and making it slightly larger. This was most effective in increasing density and volume.

My third chakra related exercise was to try and track my own chakra as some naturally flowed outside of my body, and do minor control exercises, like keeping it close. This led me to noticing other sources of chakra nearby, and my fourth chakra exercises. At first, I could only notice them if enough of my own chakra came into contact and was absorbed by the chakra of the object or person I was sensing, which made me lose control of the chakra that used to be mine; eventually, I noticed familiar chakra sources like my parents, then even later, unfamiliar chakra sources within range, whether they had any of my chakra in them or not. I would meditate on this daily, training to expand my range and refine my focus, while also trying to multitask on whatever it was I was doing normally.

This in turn led to my fourth exercise, where I would try to re-absorb my own chakra, and the chakra of others. I found that my own could be reabsorbed safely, but that others had to be mixed with my own chakra, at which point it would be infected by my chakra's essence, for lack of a better term, and made available to my control. When alone, I would purposefully leak chakra out, keep it close, wait till my system was full again, then re-absorb it, increasing my volume and density, and improving my external chakra control.

As a baby, with little to do other than focus on learning 'Kaa-san and Tou-san's language, doing memory and math game in my head to improve my mind, and a bit of meditation on my spirit, I had plenty of time when I was "sleeping" to muck about with these exercises. Though I didn't know it at the time, they would provide an excellent base to build the type of skills I'd need to survive.

I was about one year old when I discovered that I was living in a Naruto-verse, and more importantly in Uzushiogakure as an Uzumaki. I nearly wept I was so happy I had started my training early enough. It turns out, 'Kaa-san and Tou-san's red hair? The weird spiral symbol I'd sometimes see? All of these were signs that didn't really click until I was better with the language.

I wasn't sure how to feel about this.

I wasn't particularly familiar with Naruto, more's the pity. I had read a good number of fanfics, but the original was far too annoying to get into. I didn't know much, and had no guarantee that we were in fact in a canon Naruto-verse, nor whether a canon verse is reflective of the majority of possible Naruto-verses.

In other words, the multi-versal identity was certainly uncertain.

Less philosophically, I had no idea where the canon of Naruto fell in relation to reality. Was it truly historical, or at least a semi-child friendly depiction of true events? Was it fiction from the same setting, similar to Jiraiya's Tale of the Utter Gutsy Shinobi? Or was it even less relevant? In other words, I didn't know whether I had a cheat sheet, a loose guide, or whether I was about to do something as stupid as thinking that reading Shakespeare's Macbeth qualified me as an expert on the War of the Roses.

I decided to work off of the assumption that I was in canon, or at least something closely related, until I knew better.

That aside, I was in Uzushio, which I knew fell in canon, but I didn't know when, my best guess being "sometime after Mito requests a replacement to hold the nine-tails", nor could I locate myself in time. Further, I was well familiar with the butterfly effect, so assuming I was not in a static time-stream, in which case [everything I do] is something [I will have done in the canonical future] so I may as well [do as I would and hope for the best] – and yes, I did study modern philosophy in school – then the butterfly effect meant that this far out, nothing was certain of the absolute shit-storm that may be coming. On the other hand, considering it was the result of a centuries old conspiracy, and I was basically living in a death-world, I decided I should definitely prepare as well as I could.

Still, if there was a clan to be part of, the Uzumaki's were among the top choices. Maybe without the cheating eyes of the Uchiha or all-seeing Hyuga (both of whose capabilities I resolved to copy or duplicate at some point), but we didn't have the whole Hatred or Servitude fetishes either. Plus canonically, until it got destroyed, Uzushio was as far as I could recall a pretty good place to be. Bonuses included high levels of prosperity and technology, a virtual monopoly on high-level sealing, defensible and somewhat removed from the concerns of the mainland other than our, somewhat unfortunate, military alliance with Konoha. And, most critical for me, access to the sealing libraries of Uzushio, peerless repositories of a discipline which was interpreted back on Earth as a mix of magic, science and art.

As soon as I found this out, I forced my parents to start teaching me how to draw. I sucked. I was a baby, so it was expected. But, I brought a level of focus to it that impressed my parents. Turns out, Kaa-san was a fairly decently ranked sealer, and was ecstatic to start teaching me, calling me "her little genius" at the speed I learned the meaning of symbols and making Tou-san extremely jealous. Honestly, Kaa-san was pretty amazing.

I always thought of her as this huge (compared to me), but svelte and reasonably fit and just the right height (compared to Tou-san, who was kind of a beast, and always has 5-o'clock shadow), always dressed well, and gentle person who spent a lot of time writing in the office, but always with time to change or feed or play with me whenever I fussed, and infinite patience to point out and explain things in simple terms that I would hopefully understand. I took a while before I realized exactly what she was writing while in her office, to learn that she was this world's equivalent to, I'm not sure: a journeyman enchanter? A math-mancer or Pythagorean mage? A scientist? And at such a young age too. My eyes were full of admiration for Kaa-san.

Tou-san, who was part of the clan-guard (which was somewhere between ninja and national-guard), seemed to have focused a bit more on kenjutsu and physical combat, which I guessed from his rather manly appearance, sword, and callouses; I was just hoping he could teach jutsu too. Being a bit competitive with Kaa-san, he started me off on a proper physical training regime, getting me ready for martial arts and swordplay with a series of exercises, stretches and games which I took to amazingly well.

It was a wet, muddy, cold, painful, and exhausting process. I loved it. It had been literally a lifetime since my body was fit enough to do so, and I had seriously missed being able to feel that burn and the sweet exhaustion of an honest work-out. Tou-san pushed just the right amount, and always made sure to explain how this game or exercise wasn't only great in its own way, but would make me an awesome man in the future. It wasn't hard to convince me. Being able to do what really amounted to martial-arts magic, and protect those we loved like Kaa-san and Uzushiogakure meant I was living the dream.

I theorized that chakra, which I had been improving at a rapid rate for over a year by that point, improved muscular and mental development too, because there was no way a one year old should be able to survive all that otherwise. And so my days passed, eating with Tou-san and Kaa-san, increasing my vocabulary, being taught to read and write by memorizing the meanings and usage of seals with Kaa-san in her office during the day, running and playing hide-and-seek, and doing basic exercises and pre-martial arts foundational work with Tou-san either early or late depending on his shift.

As I grew, and gained mobility, basic speech, the ability to eat solid foods, was finally a bit more sturdy, and had passed the all important first-year, where child mortality was so brutal, I was finally exposed to more of the village. It was a beautiful place. Relatively large, with a population in the tens of thousands, about a tenth of whom would fall under the broad umbrella of "ninja" (in reality often samurai or simply chakra-active with potential combat-applicable skills), Uzushio was also a trading hub, and made a fortune on selling seals and sealing services.

The buildings, mostly Japanese in style but with much more stone and solid materials than usual, tended to be bright and colorful. Clothes were made of fine fabrics and vibrant colors. The market had large supplies of local and foreign foodstuffs and goods. The people were pleasant, and my family well respected. We were not the very elite expected to inherit clan leadership, but were Uzumaki clan members, both of my parents being approximately Jonin within their specialties and thus of similar social position as a great-clan special Jonin in another village.

I loved life, as always, and I loved my new life too. I decide that I refused to allow it to be ruined by anyone. I would put forth my full effort, the understanding of science and technology of a highly-educated, 21st century engineer, and every ounce of cunning and viciousness. I resolved to protect this life, and the lives of those I value.

For that task, few measures were too far. I would become a monster so fearful that we were left without enemies, lest my gaze have reason to turn on them. I would advocate a policy of isolationism and neutrality to avoid conflict. But if anyone attempted to topple Uzushiogakure, the last thing they would find in their lives was me, waiting, and I would visit ruin unto their village.

Again, I had a goal. And I, who had transcended Death, refused to fail.

Chapter 3: Childhood Preparations, pt. 1

Time passed, and I as I turned 3 I grew mentally, physically, and in my budding ninja skills. I should point out, Uzushio didn't really have many "ninja". We had clan-guard who were primarily responsible for home and territorial defense (think ninja mixed with samurai), seal-masters and sealers who were responsible for all sealing work and frequently paid missions to perform sealing for others, retinue-guard who protected sealers on missions and were probably the closest to other village's ninja, and the Shadows who were somewhat similar to Konoha's ANBU.

Still, I called them "ninja" skills, since to the rest of the world, that is what those skills were. Though samurai, monks, and even some peasant families were chakra active, the ninja were the flashiest. Samurai tended to focus on refining a few less flashy techniques for killing; beyond that, their talents were typically only seen on the battlefield, or by other samurai or their own servants when practicing. The general population had little chance to see samurai using techniques because of that. Similarly, monks generally disdained flashy use of chakra as a religious matter, and the most impressive monks were typically semi-isolated in their monasteries.

Ninja, on the other hand, could be and often were hired for even relatively low-level tasks such as repairing flood-damaged fields, dealing with chakra-enhanced beasts and bandits, escorts, and the like. Unlike samurai and monks who avoided showy displays in front of the peasants and merchants, ninja loved to show off. It was a great advertisement, after all. And so, over time, chakra-skills became more colloquially known as "ninja" skills.

Tou-san moved me onto both general physical training as well as proper martial arts training in the Whirling Fist, Uzushio's general military combat style. The style was a pretty interesting one, and fit my own previous experiences well. It emphasized out-fighting (fighting at relatively longer range) for both striking and grappling or Aikido style techniques; this made perfect sense considering most enemies, especially enemy ninja, had hidden weapons or crippling-strike close combat techniques. A Muay-Thai style clench could lead to a half dozen stabs to the gut; such an outcome was not exactly the best way of surviving a fight, let alone winning it.

Whirling Fist strikes focused on soft targets for knuckle strikes, especially at the lower levels. Seal-masters needed good manual dexterity, Uzumaki tended to live for a long time, and knuckle conditioning tends to make people highly arthritic by their forties. That combination meant knuckle conditioning, and thus hard knuckle striking, was contraindicated. Instead, harder targets were struck with hammer strikes, and there was a lot of conditioning for the arms to use a hard-blocking style.

Kicks tended to be low and practical, with a lot of training on how to change target from a kick already in motion, presumably to help prevent enemy knife-wielders from managing to slice the leg up. The grappling was more similar to Aikido and longer-distance jujitsu techniques. The style further frequently used circular motions and force-redirection to present a good target or opening for comrades when fighting in formation. It tended not to result in long grapples, but more positioning a joint to be struck, or moving the body to open up a target by unbalancing the enemy.

Overall, I'd describe the style as somewhat conservative, defensively prioritizing minimizing the practitioner's openings and danger rather than focusing on offensively breaking the opponent. Attacks tended to be fairly opportunistic, counter-attacking and exploiting openings brought out by the defensive maneuvers.

We had not yet moved on to weapons, though the physical training for the sword had become somewhat more intense. Tou-san was so impressed by my progress that he was actually a little worried; I heard him talking to Kaa-san that I was learning things amazingly quickly, and my pain resistance was intense, so much so that he had to be careful not to push hard, like he might with a normal kid. Knowing I had high pain resistance came from blocking training.

There are several different types of blocking in martial arts, but most can be boiled down to five philosophies. And this wasn't just on Earth, or Chakyu – this is a more universally applicable analysis. Any good combat style will use all of them, given the right circumstances, but will emphasize some, and personal preference plays a part in how effective these methods are as well as which sub-styles a practitioner focuses on. These are:

1) Tank, or being so physically tough you can take the hit and move through it. There is actually a lot of timing involved with such an approach; if you move into a hit at the right time, you can easily rob it of 60-80% of the total impact, and damage the balance of your opponent. Typically, you are then at an in-fighting distance, and by striking first, can begin a real beat-down. Once inside the enemy's engagement range, a tank tends to stick, keeping distances totally minimal, hitting hard and grappling viciously while preventing the enemy from building distance and recovering. This style is much riskier when weapons are involved.

2) Dodge, or, don't get hit in the first place. A lot of the time, this means being an out-fighter, staying at the edge of where they can and can't hit you, dodging the strike, and countering. Done properly, you can inflict damage at no cost to yourself, and frequently combined with parry-blocks which put enemies minimally off-line. Highly effective if you are fast and have a light build, this was my own favored strategy, and it worked well when your enemy may have some instant-death-touch jutsu.

3) Hard Blocks are the idea that a block is also an attack. It relies on conditioning the bones that you use to block, and making the blocking motions both fast and heavy. It tends to mesh most easily with Tanking, but can be combined with dodging without too much difficulty. You could see it in Earth martial arts like Goju-Ryu. One such block, to block a punch, involved at a basic level trying to break through their wrist using your own wrist in a block. At an even higher level, you might move forward and block at a joint like the elbow, breaking that.

The conditioning though was brutal; I'd forgotten how learning it on earth, the first time when I was 13, my arms were a constant bruise for six months until the holidays. The first day, when doing the conditioning sucked; I (like anyone) developed bruises over the practice, but just kept going. A week later though, everything started off sensitive and just got so much worse. Bruises on bruises on bruises over totally raw nerves until eventually those nerves start to die off and the practitioner starts to lose pain sensitivity in those conditioned areas.

If you haven't guessed yet, Whirling Fist loved techniques like that, spinning around an attack, building momentum, and counterattack-blocking before the enemy could withdraw; suffice to say, Dad was super-impressed at my resilience and willingness to continue practice.

4) Soft Blocks are just what they sound like. Think Tai-chi or Aikido. These are good for redirection, but a sufficiently stronger enemy with enough skill and experience against your style tended to break through as they learned to anticipate the pattern of force application they needed to use to deflect much of the parrying force. Parry-blocks fall under this category too, but I have yet to come across a hand-to-hand combat style which didn't include parry blocks, so they are not stylistically definitive. Although I liked the concept of soft blocks, and combined with chakra they could be effective, they were generally not used within Whirling-Fist unless part of a dodge.

5) Trapping Blocks are designed for grapplers, though are very effective for a striker when used against kicks. A trapping block tries to gain control of a limb after a strike, often leading into grappling. While Whirling-Fist had some grappling, it is not emphasized. Sando, an Earth Chinese military martial art, had some great kick-traps though, that were otherwise similar to the types of blocks in hard/tank styles such as some karate variants and Muay-Thai. I was including those blocks into my own style, mostly because it was really satisfying to catch a kick on the rebound and then literally toss my suddenly off-balance and helpless opponent.

So, like I said, Whirling-Fist was mostly a combination of striking with dodging and hard-blocks, and a bit of longer-distance redirection joint techniques. It involved brutal conditioning, though not of the precious hands (which could become single-touch death when at a sufficient sealing level). At my urging, and continued adherence to the training schedule, Tou-san had me doing the conditioning at the best rate for a kid my age and with my recovery rate.

The problem with this kind of conditioning was that if taken just a little too far, it could damage the body faster than I could recover, resulting in problems like spongy and fragile bones (a nasty issue that those who did a lot of running back on Earth could get in their shins). Kaa-san wasn't super happy, but gave in when she realized that it was at my own demand.

When they asked me why, I told them: "Kaa-san, Tou-san, this world is dangerous. I will be powerful, and have to fight, like both of you. The more I sweat and bleed now, the less likely I am to fail later. I will have no regrets." They were pretty speechless at this, and then both hugged me really, and I do mean really, overly, obnoxiously, tight. Kaa-san was, I think, a little teary, and mumbling something I didn't catch. But still, family love for the win. Suffice to say, my training continued, and was speckled with all the tips and tricks to improve my efficiency, both in training and combat, that Tou-san could give.

I think that's something important to recognize and emphasize. I wasn't training to go on the US karate competition circuit, or to stay fit, or against the tiny risk that I might one day be mugged. No, I was training for the eventual surety that I would be serving in our military, fighting for my life against other super-human warriors. I knew it. Tou-san and Kaa-san knew it. And that knowledge, well, it was a pretty good motivator.

After that conversation, Tou-san also started me on external chakra control and internal chakra reinforcement. I could do bark-sticking (Uzumaki's had more chakra, so leaf-sticking was actually kind of hard), and when focusing could tree-walk. We were working on leaves and unconscious tree-walking, and after I could water-walk Tou-san said he'd start me on some water-jutsus and water-elemental manipulation (his affinity).

Tou-san also began the basics of chakra reinforcement. At it's most basic, you could flood an area with chakra, making it stronger. Although I was a chakra beast even for an Uzumaki due to my exercises, even a Jinchuriki would get tired using that to maximize power. At a slightly higher level, you could enhance specific tissues such as bones, making them tougher, or muscles to make them stronger or faster, and by using beams or columns of chakra rather than pools, enhance them in a certain direction further increasing efficiency. Intention was important with Chakra, and as I trained my chakra to react to my intention, I would be able to control whether the enhancement was more for speed, or power, or toughness.

It turned out that the rapid-chakra internal flow technique (something that I luckily practiced so much that it had become automatic) actually gave a bit of a bonus to everything, but meant that maximum exertion drained energy a bit faster since I was technically able to go at a higher level. My chakra volume, density and vitality were sufficient for it to be worth it though, as the only real way to use techniques like this in combat with other buffing techniques was to make it automatic.

Plus, it meant that if I fought at a level equivalent to what would be (without internal-flow) 100%, I only drained energy like I was fighting at 90% of the flow-less levels. In other words, it allowed me to go all out at a boosted level for a relatively minor cost, but also made me efforts in general more efficient. Apparently it also made it harder to put me under a genjutsu, as the genjutsu would have to match that high circulation speed or it would jar against my chakra system. For the purpose of making my non-circulatory chakra enhancement combat-effective, Tou-san had me practicing enhanced punches, blocks, kicks, and movements with the chakra reinforcement to make the reinforcement faster, more efficient, and most important an unthinking instinct when I need to use it.

That involved a lot of work.

There's a saying that it takes ten thousand repetitions to make something instinctive. For example, ten thousand jab-cross combinations will make a jab-cross fast and automatic. To build up a full personal combat style back on Earth typically required something on the order of ten different kicks and about forty punches, blocks and counters, another twenty pieces of footwork, dodges and rolls, and a dozen throws, grapples, and escapes. Overall, with transitions, a practitioner typically required on the order of a million technique repetitions. And that was after they could do all of those hundred or so motions semi-perfectly and had picked out the techniques that worked for them.

I needed that same number of repetitions, but every one required different chakra enhancements. Different balances of which muscle was getting how much energy in which pattern. How that meshed with the movement, combined into an ass-kicking technique. It was involved, and even with hours of practice every day I knew it would be years before I was at a skill level that I was happy with. I loved it though, the complexity and difficulty of turning my body into a fine-tuned machine. But best of all was the beauty when everything came together.

Kaa-san too was starting to train me at an enhanced level. By the age of three, I could read about as well as a 12 year old, and could read basic seals (my handwriting wasn't quite good enough, according to Kaa-san, to write them yet). Part of this was that I already knew concepts, all I had to do was learn the word itself and the symbol (I truly loathed having a logographic rather than phonetic writing system). Part of this was my own genius, and the crazily flexible mind of a child.

And part of this was the unflagging efforts of Kaa-san. I knew about different inks, and brushes, and most of the technical aspects behind at least the most basic seals. And all of those inks, brushes and the like were crucial, as they effected the conductivity and charge of chakra in the seal. Kaa-san even started me on the small, fine-scale chakra control needed to be able to chakra-etch seals at a touch (and eventually even a distance with a variant of chakra-strings), doing so without using ink or brush at all.

Seals had three important aspects. The first was territory: seals could be used to define a space wherein a certain effect would occur, or a point at which it started. This could be the blast zone for an explosive seal, maximum object size of a space-sealing one, or persistent effect zone for a ward. The next was condition identification. A lot of the time, this was as simple as "chakra has been pulsed into the seal" for an explosion seal's countdown, but could be more complex like "object generating chakra smaller than 10cm by 5cm by 5cm is within the defined territory" for an anti-vermin ward (a huge seller on ships and for warehouses, by the way).

The last aspect was the effect, which was normally some combination of converting, modifying and directing energy. The effect was one of the things about seals that was just so damned awesome, since it could be basically anything. Teleportation or very fast travel? Sure, though difficult and generally pretty expensive chakra-wise. Sealing? Trapping Bijuu was actually, relatively easy in a lot of ways given that they are just sentient chakra. The trick was keeping them trapped. Explosions? Healing chakra converters (totally necessary for Uzumaki medics with their large reserves)? Genjutsu jammers? All of these were possible. And all had dozens of different, already discovered seal formulations in the clan and village libraries.

The hard part about seals was that they don't really fit into a conventional wisdom. Part invocation of oriental divine and abstract entities, part analogue to chakra's version of electrical-engineering, part computer-program, part absurdly advanced and obscure physics (especially for dimensional effects) and part art, there was a reason few villages had more than one or two seal masters. You had to have some sort of natural talent for it, an intuition that allowed the sealer to go beyond what could be calculated or even inferred. Thankfully, the Uzumaki bloodline seemed to have some natural predilection for seals that in any other place would result in being protected as a national strategic interest. Even among my fellows though, I was (somewhat unsurprisingly) a genius.

I'm not sure if it was Kaa-san's exposing me to seals so early, or my own natural intelligence and knowledge boosting my biological tendencies, or the fact that I had passed beyond the veil of our limited understanding of reality, or my exposure to hundreds of different magical systems, many geometrical, in fiction I had read in the past, but I just got seals. And I did so faster than anyone Kaa-san had heard of.

There was a set of sealing dictionaries, some of the greatest protected secrets of Uzushio. Seriously, I think the security seals checked my soul, and I was sure that there were some checking the body and even mind for any spying devices, based on conceptual understandings of observation. If you think about it, that means the sealers used quantum mechanics just in the security seals. I also knew that the dictionaries checked sealing understanding, and wouldn't allow access to levels that weren't already understood. Seal masters could get super squirrelly when they got paranoid, and the protection of these was the province of the most paranoid of the seal-masters, past and present.

These dictionaries were linked to the master dictionary, and were kind of like an advanced Wikipedia about the seals you had access to. It describes general usage of characters and sub-seals, some seals they were incorporated into, deep information (like celestial and elemental alignment, dimensional polarization, and chakra orientation) and known interactions with other sealing components.

Suffice to say, Kaa-san had access to her own, personal, version, with the standard protections. Her dictionary contained all level one and level two sealing elements, as well as level three and four sealing elements concerning detection and abjuration warding, Kaa-san's specialty. As a note, the dictionaries had nine levels. For perspective, Minato's Hiraishin, as a super-efficient distance-ignorant teleportation technique, might rank as a level six seal in its entirety. Most components would rank as level four or below.

Level eight was for things like summoning greater gods; in other words, with access to a level eight sealing dictionary, you could build a custom divine summoning seal. No one even talked about what level nine seals can accomplish, and I didn't want to know; it seemed like the kind of knowledge that might be capable of noticing you for knowing it. So, Kaa-san's level two/four dictionary was pretty damned respectable, especially given her age. She was expected to become at least a candidate to make sealing master in the future.

What was cooler though, was she'd officially made me her apprentice. I passed the basic exam (thankfully not public, really didn't need that attention), and was written into her book as her apprentice, giving me access to seals which she thought appropriate (sadly, still somewhat lacking – I wouldn't be breaking reality anytime soon). Still, they were so much fun to play with. I was basically on the sealing equivalent of writing "hello world" programs, but learning very quickly. I mean, hell, I was three. By age eight, I expected to be able to write my own original strategically useful seals at that rate.

Chapter 4: Childhood Preparations, pt. 2

So, more time passed, and I turned 4 years old. I'd continued my training, could water-walk, knew the basic hand-signs, and could do the body-replacement technique (kawarimi) and visual-transformation (henge). It really wasn't that ridiculous; Kakashi managed the same at age five, even graduated top of academy class, and I had the benefit of having been an adult and having started my training basically the moment I was born.

Tou-san said that as a special birthday present, we'd be finding out my chakra affinity, and he would begin training on elemental techniques, starting with an elemental clone if I have Water or Earth at a high enough level (Uzumaki's tended to have a hard time making illusionary Bushin). Kaa-san, not be outdone, gave me a calligraphy set, and told me that I was finally ready to draw my first real seal.

Dad handed me the affinity seal. Turns out, Uzumaki's don't use chakra paper to check affinities since it is "crude, inelegant, and imprecise. We have sealing masters for a reason." Instead, we use a seal that will give a numerical value for your affinity, one-ten. The scale is somewhat non-linear; the gap between an eight and seven is far more than that between a seven and a six. A nine would be a perfect, trained affinity. Think Senju Tobirama with his water. A ten would be even more than that; almost a deity of the element, capable of using it with a thought and minimal chakra expenditure. The only reason a ten existed on the scale was to make sure that no one went beyond it.

As someone who is untrained, unless there was something odd, I'd be in the one to five range. A five was considered amazing, especially for someone without training, and meant you could likely become one of the strongest users of that element in all the nations if trained. A four was considered a strong affinity for the element, to the point you might specialize in using the element. A three was considered worth training, but not particularly special. With a two, you'd struggle to ever really use the element. A one, you may was well not try and a zero meant it is impossible for you to generate this type of chakra, ever; a zero for the five elements would actually be a sign of a serious medical condition in humans.

Uzumaki's tended to have high water and/or air affinities. Dad was a fairly strong water-type, and it was likely I inherited at least part of that. I myself frequently did a meditation where I tried to become one with the wind, so I expected a relatively high wind affinity as well.

As Uzumaki's, we were always adding functionality into things, seals especially. So, at some point, someone decided since we were testing affinity, the seal may as well test density and yin/yang balance too. Apparently, testing volume was somewhat dangerous (involving either an invasive scan, which some are allergic to, or draining large volumes of chakra, which could overload the seal and cause an "uncontrolled seal rupture" - aka explosion). Instead, volume was tested via jutsu or filling chakra battery seals rather than using expensive scanning seals; ditto with refill speeds.

Yin-Yang balance was a number between one and a hundred, and represented the percentage of the chakra which was Yang or physically attributed. Uzumakis tended to be Yang-heavy, as did kids, but as a genius (and reincarnation) I expected my Yin to be relatively high. Typically, high Yin levels as an Uzumaki kid meant that as our bloodline develops and we aged, even more Yang chakra would be produced as our bodies "prefer" to be Yang heavy. Generally, even those with high Yin concentrations had at least 60% Yang going into their sixties (Yin increased with age, in normal people, while Yang was highest when young). This was a good thing, as it would turn me into even more of a chakra monster, but bad in that it would mean I had to constantly maintain my levels of chakra control lest I backslide.

Density, similar to the elements, was one to ten with 10 being almost solid when still and edging into the "has transcended mortal flesh and become a biju" territory. Tou-san, as a ninjutsu/kenjutsu based clan-guard of about jonin level was probably a seven. A normal shinobi-born kid might hit a density of two by the time they were twelve years old. A member of a major clan might hit three. A genius in a major clan who trained extensively, someone like Kakashi or Itachi might hit four or five, or, very very rarely six. A gifted Uzumaki who trained a lot might hit six by age twelve; a very few managed a density of seven. A single Uzumaki in a generation might have a chakra density of eight by the time they were about to enter puberty.

Typically, density increased with age and training, and was one of the major ways that ninja got "more chakra". Their circulatory systems weren't flexible enough after puberty to expand much in volume, but the density could (and did) increase. Conversely, before puberty, it was relatively easy for volume to increase, so density tended to have relatively low gains. Jinchuriki for example tended to have very high volume and density, though the speed at which the system grew combined with the absolute lack of established and reinforced pathways from regular chakra use tended to give them terrible control. A jinchuriki might have had a density of seven to eight by the age of twelve, and might reach nine in their lifetimes.

High chakra densities, especially at young ages, were typically a pre-requisite to activate bloodlines. Very high densities, especially without any full bloodline to activate, frequently resulted in a new bloodline, especially if the high density occurs before puberty. This chance could be further boosted by high environmental chakra concentrations.

Any Uzumaki with density seven or above before puberty could activate the Adamantine Chains bloodline, and by law must be reported to the Clan-lord so appropriate training could be arranged. In fact, this is one of the few invasive laws concerning Uzumaki clan-members and also required testing at the age of 12. Apparently when you first "unlocked" the chains, they tended to fly all over the place and could accidentally cause a lot of damage or even death.

Tou-san and Kaa-san didn't explain any of the particulars of the affinity test beyond the elemental affinity parts; I learned all the rest later. I channeled a trickle of chakra into it, until a light on the seal indicated a sufficient volume. A moment later, seven circles indicated numbers.

Water: 5

Earth: 4

Lightning: 3

Wind: 6

Fire: 3

Yang: 35%

Density: 8

"Holy… Tou-san! Kaa-san! Look! I'm going to be the god of wind!" I beamed at them, and saw the looks of mild shock. Tou-san recovered first.

"Hahaha… not quite. I didn't say this, but since your density is so high, you need to subtract one from each of your elemental affinities. Normally, we only see that problem in older people. So, really, it's this," he said, taking my paper and writing down the adjusted affinities.

Water: 4

Earth: 3

Lightning: 2

Wind: 5

Fire: 2

Yang: 35%

Density: 8

"Still though, you should be very proud. You'll be amazing at wind jutsu, and I can teach you all of my skills with water too. You're lucky; both are relatively common affinities for Uzumaki, so we have a lot of techniques for you. We'll have to see about getting your cousin Kiyoshi to give you some training." Tou-san was getting a bit carried away already with plans for future training. We really bonded during it, and he took a lot of pride in it, but it could annoy Kaa-san if he wasn't careful.

Still, seeing cousin Kiyoshi more would be awesome. He was Dad's first cousin, and one of the closest to our family. He was a bit younger, only seventeen years old, and hadn't married yet, though he brought a number of dates around to our place for dinner when he was at home. He was part of a naval patrol group in the clan-guard, and strong enough in wind techniques to enhance the speed of the ship while damaging enemy sails. Apparently, he was very well thought of, and considered something of a genius with his wind techniques. He was also a bit ridiculous, and over to top at home, with these big sweeping gestures and exaggerated stories that he told me. He was probably my favorite, outside of my parents and grandparents.

"Wait, wait, wait! Kohaku, look at the density and think for a moment, you jutsu obsessed knuckle-head! We have to bring him to Kazuo-sama, he may have the Adamantine Chains."

As an aside, Kazuo-sama was Kazuo Uzumaki, the clan leader, head of Uzushiogakure, and overlord of Whirlpool and its associated territories. Technically, he had several titles: sama, in this case, as he was acting in a non-formal setting as head of our extended family. He could also be called dono (milord) when acting in a more formal setting as head of the noble Uzumaki Clan, or as lord of Uzushiogakure. Finally, when acting as the Lord of Whirlpool, he would typically be addressed as kaka (excellency). The Uzumaki had this very strange history, where they ended up as a shinobi clan, a noble clan, and the rulers of Whirlpool, and for some strange set of formal diplomatic rules, the Uzumaki Clan head was actually three people: the clan head, the village leader, and the minor Daimyo of the country, most of which was organized in semi-independent townships.

"Good point Tomomi. What do you think, eh Daichi? Happy to have the honored bloodline of the Uzumaki?" And hell yes, I was honored. More elated, actually. The Uzumaki, partially because of our naturally high chakra density, had a ton of potential bloodlines (beyond a general propensity for seals and high chakra amounts). This was partially a result of chakra density being one of the defining characteristics for bloodline activation, but largely that the Uzumaki were an old clan that mostly stayed neutral during the warring clans era.

Over time, we'd bred with just about everyone at one point or another. This meant a lot of residual bloodline potential, and a high chance of activating something. Most of the time these were positive adaptations, but occasionally people had cosmetic deformities, sensitivities, allergies or the like that had to be managed. Within this slurry of potential specialness, the Adamantine chains had a special place in Uzumaki hearts; the chains were powerful in and of themselves, but had also been used by many of the Uzumaki's greatest heroes.

The main reason these chains were so awesome is that they were ridiculously overpowered. First off, they stayed connected to the user, so while they took a lot of chakra to use, you could return them to your body and regain the chakra. In other words, they merely occupied part of your reserves, rather than really draining chakra during a fight. Considering Uzumaki had high chakra density and volume to begin with, and the Adamantine chain users were prodigious even among the Uzumaki, it was rare for the amount reserved for the chains to prove needed; still, if it came down to the wire, the user could retract the chain and then use that chakra as needed.

Next, the Adamantine chains were, as you may have guessed, ridiculously strong (physically). As in, they were strong enough to hold back Biju with an experienced user. The chains didn't actually have to look like "chains", but could be edged or barbed for increased damage. They were ridiculously fast when being used too; since they were basically a chakra construct, the mind's imagination was the biggest limit to how quickly they can move. Lastly, the chains were chakra conductive, but only for the creator's chakra; otherwise, they were completely chakra blocking.

This meant that you could use chakra flow on the chains; chakra flow was a technique that imparted elemental chakra onto physical objects. Wind-attributed flow could cut through just about anything. With my wind and chakra reserves, I'd be a whirling dervish of chains capable of going Cuisinart-blender on everything within a few hundred meters.

You could also apply seals through the seals, so long as you could use chakra seal-etching. There were some seals designed to direct their payload through a chakra conductive medium; these were designed with the chains in mind, though could also be used with some swords. There was, in fact, a specific seal-modifier so that it could be directed unidirectionally through a chain. Sealmasters with the chains often used them to apply several seals at one time over wide spaces, giving massive battlefield control and allowing widespread destructive sealing techniques to be used with a good degree of control. So, defense, offense, and restriction, the chains were damned awesome.

In fact, it was recorded that in the early days of the Uzumaki clan's setting up shop in Uzushiogakure and the land of Whirlpools that an alliance of several pirate-shinobi clans were annoyed in the perceived incursion into their territory, and attacked. An Uzumaki champion at the time, who's name had since been lost and was known only by his title of "the Red Osprey" (he was the possessor of the Osprey summoning contract, still in Uzumaki hands centuries later) was said to have sunk a dozen ships, all commanded by ship-combat specialist ninja, and killed over two hundred enemy ninja in the battle. He then proceeded to the island, now known as Wave, that was their base, and threw them the head of the enemy commander. He ordered the clans to bend the knee, or lose the head. The Himura clan, whose ships sailed under red sails, and the Kawaguchi both surrendered; they are part of Uzushiogakure to this day. The others refused, and were utterly destroyed. The only weapon that the Osprey used were his chains.

So, hearing I might have these chains, I was pretty stoked. I'd heard the stories before, and had a lot of ideas as to how I could use them. Most of all, I wanted to find out if shadow-clones could use them, since that would mean I could make shadow-clones with chain-armor capable of tearing through even enemy jonin. It would make defending the village much easier.

And so, we got dressed in somewhat more formal kimonos and trooped off to fortified compound in the middle of the village where Kazuo-sama lives and works during the day. We passed a number of guards, most of them covert, but my sensing skills were fairly strong, and only the stronger stealth-types would be hiding their chakra enough to avoid me. I was sure there were a few of these near Kazuo-sama, but not that many. Soon enough, we were in a waiting room, and Kaa-san had informed a secretary that we had "non-pressing family business concerning the inheritance of Uzumaki traits in Daichi". As it turned out, Kaa-san actually had higher rank within the clan than Tou-san; we were a fairly meritocratic rather than patriarchal people when it came to rank, and sealing skills were highly valued.

We were served some tea and snacks by a servant, and about a half-hour later, the secretary returned to bring us to Kazuo-sama. Kazuo was a strong looking man, about six foot tall, with a full head of dark, wine colored hair just beginning to grey pulled into a ponytail. He was dressed in the semi-formal uniform of a clan-guard officer, which included a lightly armored chess-piece and clothing that looked both comfortable, respectable, and combat-effective at the same time. He gave off an excellent appearance and air for a clan-leader and lord. He stood as we entered, and smiled, beckoning us to sit with him while we gave our bows.

"Ah, Tomomi-san, Kohaku-san, and little Daichi-kun! You're all looking very well, and Daichi-kun seems to growing to be a fine young man. Which reminds me, it's your birthday isn't it? Congratulations; though it's not much, please accept this token, though it is not much."

With this, he gave me a beautifully detailed box about a foot cubed, made of a lovely lacquered wood with a hint of red stain. I bowed politely, thanking him greatly. I was curious what was in it, but too polite to open it until after we left. He could tell though, and grinning, told me to open it.

Inside were a pair of finely carved wooden ospreys and a seal. Inspecting the ospreys, I saw small seals scribed on the underneath of the wings. It was truly masterful work; though the sealing was not overly complicated, the fine detail and orientation of the seals was extremely difficult. All together, the base seal would, when fed chakra, detect the bounded space it was in, and have the Ospreys swoop about inside of it; at least, that was my best guess, as I didn't know a number of seals that were used.

I suspected that Kazuo-sama, one of the best sealers in the clan, had chakra etched the seals himself. Likely within the half-hour we were waiting. A real class-act, our clan-head. I was greatly impressed and touched, both by the sealing itself, as well as the thought that went into giving such a present to me, a four-year-old whose parents, while promising, were far from significant within the clan.

"My greatest thanks, Kazuo-sama. The sealing work is beautiful. And the seal itself; the ospreys will fly within my room?" At this he burst into laughter.

"Amazing! I didn't expect you to recognize that for years yet! Thank you for the compliment on the work. Are you interested in sealing?"

"Very much so! Kaa-san has even made me her apprentice." I was throwing Kaa-san under the bus when it came to our Head's attention a bit, but if I was going to be the child prodigy, then I was going to be, by god, a prodigy.

"Really?" This time, the question was directed at Kaa-san. She looked a bit sheepish.

"Ah, yes Kazuo-sama. He passed the test, and, well, showing him the dictionary was the best way for him to learn without always asking questions." Thanks, Kaa-san! "In fact, today is going to be the first time he is allowed to create and activate a seal he drew himself."

And now that I was reminded about that, I was excited all over again. Being able to create and activate a seal you drew is a big thing. While other villages may allow dangerous hacks to call themselves sealer, as the Uzumaki clan and with such a large number of available sealers, we held ourselves to higher standards. Though I was Kaa-san's apprentice, I would only become an apprentice sealer once I had passed this step.

"Excellent, excellent. I am always happy to see the promise of the next generation. Becoming an apprentice sealer at the age of four is an impressive achievement; I'll look forward to your future, young man. So, what brings you here?"

"Ah, well. I was thinking that I'd start to teach Daichi-kun some jutsu, and so tested his affinity. He had an eight on the density, so according the Chakra Density Indication of Adamantine Potential Act we brought him to you." Tou-san dropped this brick with characteristic lack of subtlety, and at this, Kazuo lost a bit of his composure. Granted, a four year old, especially one who wasn't a jinchuriki, with that level of chakra density was nuts. If I continued to grow as I got older, which I intended, I might end up actually achieving a perfect ten on my density. At the time, I didn't know what that meant, and I doubted my parents did either, but Kazuo definitely did; it meant I was leaving the map, and going into the space of saints and monsters. After a moment to reflect, Kazuo replied.

"Truly incredibly. Well, as per the Act, I will now confirm your findings." He passed me a seal. I repeated the process, and the readings were the same.

"Very good. And an interestingly high amount of Yin, with great elemental affinities. You will certainly become an admirable man, Daichi, if you continue to work hard."

"Of course, thank you, Kazuo-sama!" I replied with a little bow. I was pretty damned cheerful; it was hard not to be, getting that kind of praise from the absolute ruler of your territory and your clan patriarch, especially since I was a kid.

"Very good. I'll send Haruto over starting Wednesday next week. He'll train you in the Chains, and starting next weekend you will take classes with my niece, Kushina, who also has the possibility of the chains. She's a bit more than year older than you, but you seem very mature and I am sure you will become great friends." We thanked Kazuo-sama again, said our goodbyes and left. I was left thinking though.

Kushina existed, and I had previously learned that Mito did too. The Biju existed. The probability of this world being at least a near-neighbor of a canon Naruto world was significant and getting likelier with everything I was finding out.

Kushina was in the Academy with Minato and other Konohagakure brats, and Uzushio was invaded around the time that she moved over. That meant I had about two years at the earliest, and six years at the latest, to prepare for the invasion, with it being most likely three or four years.

I needed to step up my training.

Chapter 5: Brains and Chains

Following our meeting with Kazuo, and my successfully testing a seal to become an official apprentice sealer, I decided to pick up the pace in my personal explorations. For Uzushio and the Uzumaki to survive, we needed a force multiplier. For me to have it ready in time, I needed something to increase the speed at which I worked and learned.

Two years.

I had to be ready – more, to be sure that I'd be ready in time. Any extra time would be nice, but ultimately, not something I could be sure of. For me to be ready in two years, I needed to learn faster. I may have been a genius, with one of the best developed chakra systems ever, especially given my age, but the challenge I faced was daunting.

Looking at the numbers, it was a tough situation. The "village" of Uzushio had a population at time a little higher than thirty thousand. Of those, officially, a little under a seventh were in the reserve combat forces or some active formation. That was four thousand people who were at least nominally combatants.

But, of those four thousand, about a quarter were sealers, and only one in five sealers would be any more effective than, say, a logistics corps genin from another village. Of the remaining two hundred sealers, about one hundred could fight as well as chunin, and the other hundred could match jonin; they'd be glass cannons, since the enemy jonin, probably even chunin, would be faster and have more jutsu, but the battlefield control, both defensive, mobility, and destructive that a good combat sealer could achieve was pretty impressive, especially on a prepared field. Most sealers were in the reserves, or part of logistics units.

Of the remaining three thousand who had been trained as clan or village guard, about one thousand were in the reserves for a long time and had lost their edge or were logistics units and not particularly combat effective leaving two thousand to provide the bulk of actual combat-focused personnel. Five hundred of those were genin or apprentice warriors (remember, our village had samurai types too). Of the fifteen hundred remaining, about five hundred could match jonin, while the other thousand would probably be better qualified as better-than-average chunin.

At any given time, about a third of the combat forces were on patrol, attached to National Guard soldier units, or otherwise unavailable. This meant a decapitation invasion targeted at my home would face the following:

Four hundred jonin-equivalent

Eight hundred chunin-equivalent

Two thousand genin-equivalent

These numbers were actually really good considering our population. In general, as a martial village, there were a number of private citizens who could fight (particularly the women in samurai families, many as well as chunin, some as well as jonin), but they were less organized and more for a "the village is already broken into, how much can we make them bleed" scenario.

Uzushio didn't really run active combat missions, just protection details for any sealers that left the village and national defense, and we didn't do repeat business with villages that didn't take appropriate steps to protect our sealers. Some, volunteers, would go and serve a tour or two with the Leaf, as per our alliance, and bring back new techniques so we stayed current.

Because of our generally defensive outlook, our men didn't die nearly as frequently as in other villages, and so tended to reach higher levels on average. On the other hand, our forces were a bit older on average, and had less experience of actual blooding, though all had desensitization training. Our village was wealthy, and had a high proportion of sealers; our troops reflected that, and were on average better equipped and outfitted than our potential foes, especially for things like explosive, protection and trap seals.

The biggest problem was one of scale; Uzushio was relatively small, and our culture and military planning were designed around being too tough to hit, rather than actually being able to win a war by defeating an enemy nation.

For comparison, Konohagakure at the time had above two hundred thousand citizens, and a nominal military force of twenty thousand, weighted much more heavily towards semi-crippled reserves, with higher proportions of genin, and a large number permanently committed to supporting the Daimyo's forces and intelligence gathering operations.

If they went all out, Konoha could probably put about five hundred jonin or special jonin, a thousand chunin, and twenty-five hundred genin into an assault without seriously stripping the home guard or neglecting their feudal obligations to the Fire Daimyo. Konoha's troops would be of slightly lower quality overall, and significantly worse equipment for each quality category.

At the time, Konoha was the largest military force, so you can see why Uzushio couldn't be invaded by any single village. Especially so since challenging a sealer on their own turf was rightly considered somewhat foolish. Enemy villages rarely worked together, so Uzushio could be forgiven for becoming complacent, not that being forgiven would have saved us.

A big problem with the invasion I feared was coming was that Uzushio didn't practice as aggressive population increasing measures as other villages. Ninja villages had high attrition rates and demands for fresh blood. As a result, they tended to evolve cultures that were effective at filling this need. Lightning's Kumogakure was rumored to engage in significant levels of what I, as a modern person, would consider slavery to provide enough women to fill their ranks; to be fair, in a more historical middle-ages context it wasn't quite that bad, but even other nations thought that Kumo's actions were a bit distasteful. Konoha (an example I was more familiar with) had this idea that patriotism, especially for females, was to breed with the strongest male they can, then send the kids to the war-machine.

Jonin there actually got incentives to have harems. While Uzushio allowed polygamy, consorts and concubines, our long lives and relatively low death rate didn't necessitate such an aggressive breeding philosophy. But that was for relative peacetime. What that meant during wartime was that our casualties would not replace themselves. And since our troops tended to require more knowledge and skills, we needed a longer time to train them. A series of even relatively minor wars could draw down our population and reduce our institutional knowledge, whittling away at our strength until we failed.

Uzushio had not been seriously attacked in centuries. If we were attacked, we needed to crush the invaders so completely that they never even thought of it again. I wanted attacking Uzushio to become the Elemental Countries' version of a land-war in Russia during the winter; an obvious military trap.

So, there I was, just turned four years old, and I needed a way to at least double, preferably quadruple, our combat potential. Alternatively, I needed to be able to match the combat potential of five hundred jonin on my own. And, to make it even more complicated, I needed to do so without introducing a technology that could be turned against us in the future. For example, guns. Guns were simple enough compared to the local technology level that if an enemy village developed them, their genin might have over-run us. I sure as hell was not introducing anything that could be used against us so easily.

So that was my challenge. Become a monster, or create a monster of Uzushio, and all within two years. And, as I could hardly prove I was a reincarnation with potential knowledge of the future, I had to do so without being able to get massive resources or support from my village.

At my then rate of growth, that was impossible. Even assuming I unlocked the chains, and projecting my speed forward, I still needed at least two years of progress to go against a low-strength jonin without special bloodline tricks. Assuming I somehow learned or re-created the shadow-clone jutsu, which, from Tou-san's explanation on clones, was not known in Uzushio; I might have matched a hundred jonin, though would still have lacked the ability to go after any of the S-ranked titans of the battlefield. This approach was still far from sufficient.

I decided that if my rate of growth at the time was insufficient, then I needed to improve it. Sort of like investing in infrastructure and research in the beginning of a strategy game. The experience-sharing shadow-clone jutsu, my first choice, was not known to Uzushio then, or if it was, it was at a level far higher than those I had access to (no matter how nice Kazuo-sama was). While I'd need to reinvent the shadow-clone later anyways (or steal it, or somehow purchase it, I wasn't picky), it was beyond my theoretical understanding. But if I couldn't think more, I could certainly think better; the avenue I picked was thus thought-acceleration and mental reinforcement.

I've already discussed how internal chakra acceleration makes you faster and stronger. It turns out, that while it could use regular old chakra, using energies weighted towards ki, or yang, yielded better results. As in, a one-to-two parts mixture of mental and physical energies was almost twice as effective at physical reinforcement as a one-to-one chakra mixture. Getting too imbalanced wasn't good either though, since it took time to change and would make casting jutsu impossible while too imbalanced.

Reinforcement of tissues using chakra was similar, though bone, muscle, tendons, everything had its own optimal mixture. Tou-san was a wealth of information. I wasn't perfect, or even very good at the time, but I was putting in the effort to improve and perfect myself; all of this knowledge was important for training.

A similar technique could be done in the mind, but using a predominance of chi (ie yin or mental) energies. The thing was, over-loading anything could cause damage: tears, burns, and chakra induced morbidity were just a few of the possible effects from overload.

I'd just recovered from losing my brain to disease; I had little desire to experiment with burning it out. That said, my soul was the seat of my mind. I should have been more resilient to this damage than others, and Uzumaki's, especially those with chakra densities as high as mine, were stupidly regenerative.

And, if I did die, at least I would have tried.

By that point, my personal chakra-building, control, and sensing exercises and meditations were somewhat automatic. While they were more efficient when I specifically spent hours every day on them, I could continue to improve by using them in the background. Instead, my main focus became experimentation with neural and mental reinforcement.

In the days leading up to Haruto, my new tutor's arrival, I had a bit of time free which was normally used for meditation or extra studying. Since Cousin Kiyoshi was on a long-distance patrol for the month there were no other distractions so I experimented.

First, I wanted to find the maximum load on a neuron. I reinforced a nerve a bit above the hip, then poked it. I reinforced it a bit more, and continued to do so until I felt a slight burning pinch there, after which the nerve seemed dead. Having found the limit, I set my own personal limit as half that, and began testing this level of reinforcement in other areas where I could afford to lose feeling. I burned out a few more nerves, halved the limit again, then continued testing until I was relatively sure I had found a safe amount. Then I repeated the process using yin-dominant chakra acceleration, which turned out to be basically inherently safe much the same as how the yang-dominant chakra acceleration was for my physical enhancement.

The moment of truth came as I began to apply these principles to my brain. The first day, I only applied yin-acceleration. It seemed to make me a bit sharper, more aware and focused, increased my reaction speed a fraction. I thought my memory was stronger too, and processing speed faster. All excellent advantages, probably worth another standard deviation, or about fifteen IQ points, but not the gains that I needed. It did however give me the idea to develop yin-reinforcement techniques for my signaling nerves to improve speed in combat.

The second day, I began to apply the reinforcement to the brain. And holy fuck was it a trip. Turns out, that if you reinforced areas of the brain you reinforced everything that area controlled. Sensations, pain, pleasure, colors, desire to sleep mixed with manic energy, emotions, all of them, at once, mixed with leaps of intuition and moments of clear logic.

If I didn't have the memory of being a baby, I think it might have driven me mad; if I didn't have much of my mind in my soul, I'd have lost control of my chakra and possibly killed myself with a runaway overload. I managed to dial it back though, and began systematic testing of what regions should be reinforced, and how. I was basically getting all of the symptoms from those lists drug companies are obligated to read out in television adds. When not learning from Kaa-san or training with Tou-san, I suffered temporary twitches, random pains, burning feelings, sudden bouts of emotion, hyper-awareness, blindness, irritability, hysteria, even the hiccups, and this just in the days before Haruto arrived.

Meanwhile, Kaa-san had me started on a whole new set of seals. It turned out that as an apprentice sealer, I was expected to know more – a lot more. I already knew the eighty four symbols of the basic, introductory level. Next, I had to learn every interaction they had, not just as pairs but as groups. Seals interacted somewhat similarly to atoms; anyone that studied atomic theory in solids knows you have to worry not just about the nearest neighbor atoms, but those out several further steps too.

Although seals had a lot stranger qualities than atoms. Celestial and elemental alignment, dimensional polarization, and chakra orientation were all potential qualities to be worried about. Higher level sealers with a good intuition would often talk about the beauty, hesitancy, and other artistic qualities that could have their own sub-interactions too, though I didn't have to worry about that much at my level. Apparently, the goal for my level, and what separated out those who can become true masters from those who couldn't, was the ability to develop an intuition about the interaction of seal symbols. Otherwise, to learn literally millions of combinations – and that only for the most basic symbols – was not really an option.

Tou-san, not to be outdone in the "fun new stuff now you're four," had started me on elemental jutsu. As a Water-type, he didn't know the elemental manipulation training for air, but my water affinity was still strong, being above average even for a clan-member. He was happy to start me off on several exercises to train that. I spent hours focusing on extending my senses into the water, manipulating water from one glass to another, catching rain, and desiccating leaves.

It went really well. While I may not have trained my elemental affinity before, my chakra itself was highly trained and responsive, as I'd been consciously controlling it from a young age. Further, my concentration was high. I found within days that while focusing I could complete the basic exercises. Tou-san gave me a set of small water balloons and tells me to try and work on keeping one in orbit while I work on other things; this became a new type of meditation for me. Being orbited by small, bright water-balloons was great, filling my inner child's desire to be like some comic-book character.

With the first level of manipulation done, he taught me my first water jutsu, the Canteen. The canteen was a jutsu that collected about a liter of water, typically out of the air, but could also be used on existing water sources like a pool or river. It would collect only water; at low levels, it would filter out particulate but not salts, while at higher levels, the water would be completely pure. It was excellent as a way of avoiding being poisoned, and by purposefully adding and then trying to remove salt, served as an excellent training method and way of testing my control of water.

Not the flashiest jutsu, and my inner-child was a bit disappointed, but as an E-D rank jutsu it was a great choice, since I'd be using for the rest of my life. Literally starting that day; Tou-san banned me from drinking any water that I hadn't used the canteen jutsu on. He'd even do things like add capsaicin to the water at the dinner table as a trap. At the time I didn't realize it, but looking back he must have been worried about assassination considering my status as an "amazing prodigy".

Suffice to say, I was kept so busy by both myself and my parents that I had almost forgotten about Haruto by the time he arrived.

And what an arrival he made.

It happened while I was out in a training field, putting in my three hours a day of martial arts practice and physical conditioning. I had already finished my kata and impact-conditioning, and had moved onto workout circuits of running, pushups, pullups, leaps, situps, sprints with rapid direction changes and rolls for dodging, leglifts, burpees. I'd then repeat that circuit ten times until I was properly exhausted. The first seven were without reinforcement; the last three circuits were with, but at an even more brutal pace. And yes, that did suck just as much as it sounds. On the other hand, between that and my chakra reinforcement training, Tou-san said around then that I was as fast as most genin, and stronger per pound.

I was on my sixth circuit. So there I was, covered in and dripping with sweat, steaming slightly in the cool air. I could barely even see I was focusing so hard, ears buzzing with the sound of blood, pushing my body to the limit and just far enough beyond. And then, while exhausted and distracted, I heard a fwip sound of an incoming projectile and suddenly sensed someone who had been suppressing their chakra.

I tried to dodge but tripped, luckily falling beneath the object. I rolled, coming to my feet facing the attacker. He moved towards me, fast. It was only my over-reinforcement and hard-gained speed that allowed me to block the first strike, a punishing kick that knocked me over despite my defense.

He was on me in a moment, flipping me over, capturing an arm behind my back in a half-nelson and placing his other arm around my neck, a knife held in a reverse grip touching both his forearm and my jugular. I froze, filled with panic.

I thought, in that moment, 'no, No, NO! I can't die like this, I haven't done what I needed to, I haven't lived this life to the utmost, not to this bastard, this child-murdering piece of shit, please, fuck, I NEED TO KILL HIM FIRST!'

And something heard those prayers. It wasn't Tou-san or Kaa-san or a passing Kami.

It wasn't Haruto either, if you thought that's where this was going.

No, I heard that prayer. Or rather, my subconscious and chakra did, and they answered.

Chakra poured out of me, and in truly obscene amounts too. Enough that it scalded the majority of my skin just from the concentrations of energy. And my chakra, my chains, pierced the enemy and coiled about me, lashing the air protectively. A moment later, the enemy collapsed in a burst of water, and somewhat distantly I heard someone yelling, telling me that everything was alright, that I could withdraw the chains, to just focus on my chakra coming back to me.

I did, and Tou-san and Kaa-san ran over and hugged me. While I was still a bit shock-y, they told me how proud they were, and how brave I had been, and Tou-san even said he was impressed with my speed and strength and that we'd be starting some more advanced forms the next day.

Then they motioned, and over came a new man. He looked like he was in his late thirty's, so was probably at least sixty, maybe more like eighty years old. Kaa-san was glaring at him a bit, and Tou-san looked a bit sheepish.

"Daichi, this is Haruto-sensei. The attack you just experienced was only simulated danger to get you to activate your chains. Haruto-sensei will be taking over your training in the Adamantine Chains bloodline, and will be providing some advanced training in other arts too," Tou-san explained.

"Holy shi-" I started to reply, still obviously in shock.

"Language!" Oops, I thought. Kaa-san would definitely have me in the doghouse for that later.

"Sorry, sorry. It's not every day you get attacked, think you're going to die, kill the attacker with your previously inactive bloodline, then find out it was all some sort of sadistic test!"

So, yeah, at the time I was a bit pissed. I mean, sneak attack? While I can sympathize, they had to at least allow me to be angry after. I thought I was going to die, that the whole village would fall. And, to my shame, I started to cry. I blamed my tiny body's child hormones.

Freaking child body and child emotions.

And that was how I came to meet Sensei Haruto.

Chapter 6: Meeting the Firecracker

After our eventful meeting, Haruto-sensei explained what exactly it was that he'd be teaching me. It turned out, as I'd somewhat discovered, that the "Chains" didn't normally take the shape of "chains" at all, but were normally basically whips or tentacles. The "chain" shape was actually a chakra-conservation technique; since the holes didn't include chakra, it allowed us to make the chains longer.

This fell into the first category of chains-training: manipulation. This was also used to make the chains pointed, sharper, barbed, or smooth depending on how the target should be restrained or destroyed. Manipulation further covered how quickly the chains moved, and what motions they used to strike.

Beyond manipulation, there were a few other training categories too. The second category of chains training was manifestation. This included how dense the chains were, their overall length, and overall cross-sectional volume, all of which were typically constant for all chains in use at a time. Advanced users were eventually able to manifest two or more different types of chain.

Manifestation further covered the chakra balance in the chains. Higher amounts of Yang made the chains stronger, tougher, while higher amounts of Yin made them more fluid and easier to manipulate. Since I had comparatively high levels of Yin, especially for an Uzumaki, I was expected to have an unusually high level of control. Manifestation also included how quickly the chains were generated, and how much chain was generated. A large number allowed greater effect, but over a smaller volume for the same chakra expenditure compared to a single longer chain.

The third category of training was channeling. This was how the "Sealing" chains work, as well as chains that used elemental chakra flow. Channeling was important too if they were being used to do something like restrain Bijuu, and high levels of channeling expertise could allow users to make their chains resistant to enemy elemental chakra flow techniques. The most basic level of channeling was to only allow the user's chakra to exist within the chains; this prevented the enemy from using a shock jutsu or similar. At a higher level, the chains could also be used to drain an enemy, allowing the free flow of chakra that is either the users, or uncontrolled and elementally neutral.

Lastly, there was combat training. Or, how to combine manipulation, manifestation and channeling together to block enemy techniques, and slice, tear, crush or capture as desired.

Haruto-sensei was primarily a wind user, and would be training me in how to use what he called the razor wires, his signature technique. Haruto's technique used super-dense, very fine chains only as thick as some thin wire. He then used an advanced level of wind chakra flow to make the wires even sharper, and high levels of manipulation to control the rigidity on the fly to strike fluidly and viciously but with a strong cutting edge.

Haruto demonstrated his technique by cutting a line through the foliage of an oak tree; dozens of branches, some as thick around as my arm, were cut in a moment. He showed off the piercing version of his style too, driving a handful of wires through about a meter of rock before they separated and spun, cutting a whirlpool symbol into it. I was, as you may imagine, extremely impressed. If I could learn this, I would be much stronger. Haruto had my full attention, and found me an apt pupil.

My training schedule was modified to account for those lessons. He would come twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I would visit on Saturdays to take classes with both him and Kushina. Apparently training the chains was dangerous, and so we would not be training the chains actively together until we had both achieved greater levels of control. Other days, I was expected to spend an average of one and a half hours practicing with the chains.

This meant that daily, I did the following (note that Uzushio typically ran a day based off of dawn, but for convenience I'll assume that that is at about six in the morning):

6 am: Wake up. 30 minutes of meditation, then starting the chakra building exercises and meditations while going through a set of stretches for the day ahead.

7 am: Eat breakfast with the parents.

7:30 am: Start morning with physical focused training, including katas and conditioning and physical chakra techniques. Frequently train with Tou-san.

10:00 am: Finish physical training, eat a snack and start elemental and chakra control training.

11:00 am: Finish elemental and chakra control training. Wash up.

11:30 am: Find Kaa-san, train seals.

1:00 pm: Lunch.

1:30 pm: Continue learning from Kaa-san. Sometimes work on history or theoretical knowledge beyond seals.

5:00 pm: Train chains until it gets too dark to continue, either alone or with Haruto-sensei.

6:30 pm: Eat a snack. Personal training indoors, especially chakra control and growth exercises and meditations. Practice mental reinforcement.

8:00 pm: Dinner. Tou-san was often still on shift (2-10 pm most days).

8:45 pm: Bed. Meditate on my own chakra, and on keeping the link between mind and spirit. Focus on planning sneaky or cunning or creative ways to get more powerful, or weapons concepts I could introduce and how to achieve those concepts on a large enough scale to matter.

10:00 pm: Fall asleep.

This schedule kept up until the weekend. I continued to focus on my mental reinforcement, and began making progress in identifying what part of the brain interacts with what type of thought, and how much reinforcement effected it. I could significantly, if not hugely, speed up my reaction time in general. I could also enhance my hearing to an extent. It was more of a "enhance the processing of the audible sounds you hear" than actually enhancing my hearing though; the latter would be extremely dangerous with loud noises. Instead, this made everything a lot sharper and clearer.

While useful, it was far from the holy grails that I was searching for: eidetic memory, increased logical processing speed, improved intuition, enhanced muscle memory adaptation and enhanced chakra memory adaptation. With those I would be able to grow several times faster in physical combat, practical and theoretical sealing knowledge, and chakra manipulation.

Less important, though still an eventual goal, was a combat mode consisting of mental and physical reinforcement paired with the release of a combat-cocktail of adrenaline and other drugs that I hoped would be similar to opening the first gates, if less permanently risky to my chakra coils. I had no other way beyond shadow-clones that I could think of in the scarce years I had to prepare, and so had to succeed. I endured headaches, phantom pains, even a small seizure all for my goal.

Perhaps influenced by my irritation at my continued slow progress and the pain it had caused, I was not as "on the ball" as I should have been meeting Kushina. While her importance to the canon plot had likely changed due to me and butterflies, she was still the Clan-head's niece, and had enough promise to manifest the chains even at such a young age. If she showed any promise in sealing, and I suspected she would, she would be a fairly strong candidate for next clan head despite her gender.

On the other hand, when I was introduced to her, she acted the absolute brat. Alternatively whiny, petulant, demanding, argumentative and loud, when she wasn't being more than one at once, she basically acted the way I should have expected. Here she was, five years old, told how special and clever she was to have unlocked the chains at such a young age, how it showed her excellent breeding. Somewhat more sheltered by her parents than I, due to a combination of parental preference and the demands of my genius, and spoiled due to her station, this was a predictable reaction to me, an interloper.

So there I was, suddenly taking her Haruto-jisan's attention, having become more special by unlocking the chains at an even younger age. Not only that, but I had already passed the Apprentice Sealer qualifications, and, unbeknown to me, was being hailed as the hard-working prodigy of the Uzumaki for the speed at which I learned and observations of my training. I was mature and cool and collected even though I was younger than she. In short, I challenged Kushina's childish world-view and her self image.

And so I should have anticipated that she would somewhat explode at me after I told her to "Calm down, Firecracker," when she was being overly loud and aggressive. Suffice to say, the day's training was delayed while a long-suffering Haruto dealt with her emotions after excusing me for the day.

In my defense, she was driving me a bit nuts. I wanted to grab her and shake her, tell her that she had a duty to her family, our clan, our village and nation. That her very existence may have doomed us; so closely related to Mito-sama, with the sealing chains, able to breed and likely to develop an attachment to Konoha, especially if Uzushio were destroyed.

I had no trust for the leaf; for Uzushio, with all our seals to fall, and our ally to be absent? And, if I remembered correctly, there may even have been Root ANBU taking part in the assault. For this brat, this brat that so happily accepted the platitudes of Konoha and allowed herself, allowed Uzushio, everything I valued there, my family, to be sacrificed, burned, destroyed for paltry benefit to those two-faced bastards, those scum in human skins? And for this child, the potential cause of so much misery and suffering, to be such a brat?

Well, it may not have been mature, but I had few fucks to give and threw myself back into training.

The next week of training went well. I made a conceptual breakthrough in both sealing and my mental reinforcement, on the same day to boot. I started to get a good sense just as my day's seals training was coming to an end on how the seals might combine, something which was still on my mind when I later moved onto my mental reinforcement.

I realized that the best way to enhance my mind to achieve things like eidetic, or at least improved, visual memory was to improve the memory region, the visual signal, and the aid the transfer and permanence between the two. Basically, I was looking at parts of the brain as functional elements, and reinforcing those that were responsible for certain cognitive tasks. After that week of practice, I could take mental photographs and videos, and even link in my chakra sensing.

That wasn't the week's only progress. As mentioned, I also achieved level one seals intuition. When Kaa-san tested me, she was so proud she got teary, and almost cracked a rib she hugged me so hard (no, seriously, I had to reinforce it). As a more material bonus, I got my own dictionary with the first level of seals unlocked. Dictionaries only unlocked depending on intuitive understanding as a safety measure; the fact that I had one may have been a record.

As a note, despite the intuition, the dictionary was still pretty crucial. Intuition only meant that the user had a very good idea on how to combine symbols that they already knew to get a specific result. In a computer programmer, it would be like knowing how to write code without bugs. Considering a sealing "bug" could kill the practitioner, that was pretty critical. But the dictionary was what had the full list of symbols and their information to use. It also let a user take a completed seal (done via intuition), and then back-track, checking that the practitioner hadn't missed anything. The reason that the Uzumaki were such unbeatable sealers was the combination of the deep theoretical background available in the dictionaries, and the individual intuition as a result of the bloodline.

After Kaa-san told me how hard it is to achieve that kind of intuition, and so quickly too, the thought passed my mind that all this reinforcement mucking about, especially combined with how I'd been spending so much time practicing seals, might have resulted in pools of available spiritual chakra being re-purposed to modify my mind to be even more suited towards sealing.

That, or I was just that badass (or, more likely, it was a remnant artifact of having touched on some deeper truths while reincarnating). I was happy with any of those options.

Either way, after a test on Thursday I was suddenly Uzushio's newest sealing Initiate, the term for someone with intuition on first-level seals. Second-level and above, for reference, were titled "Adepts", with Fourth-level being "Experts" and Sixth-Level "Masters". Eighth level or above were Grandmasters; only a half dozen Uzumaki were recorded as becoming Grandmasters in so many centuries.

There was chatter that at that rate I might be the next Grandmaster sometime in my lifetime. Either way, I brought myself and my parents, especially my mother, a lot of honor. Tou-san got off shift early and we went out for a special celebratory dinner.

Of course, in his typical, endearing competition with Kaa-san as to who could train me better, he announced that he thought I was ready to test for my Basic Instructor's level in Whirling-Fist and then start in with weapons. I was so happy, both due to my parents' pride and my own progress that I was still wearing the smile two days later for my second "joint-training session".

I'd reflected a bit, on why that first meeting with Kushina went so poorly, and was a bit disappointed in myself. She may have been a bit of a bratty kid, but I understood her circumstances. It was also totally unfair for me to blame her for what I estimated to be Konoha's actions in an alternate time-line. I endeavored to make our second meeting better than the first, and immediately bowed and asked her forgiveness. From the surprise on her face, it was like I had done a full dogeza (formal Japanese kneeling prostration).

She was so taken aback, blushing and stammering that I couldn't help but chuckle, which of course irritated her again. Somewhat panicked, I said the only thing I could think of.

"Sorry, Firecracker-princess, but your blushing is just a bit cute!" Of course, I used the ambiguous kind of language that meant it could be "cute like how a kitten is cute", but also "attractive"; this sent her into another paroxysm of blushing and stammering that I couldn't say that and she wasn't ready to be married like in the stories and she didn't know me and I hadn't saved her from an evil dragon. Haruto, off to the side, could barely contain 7: Fireworks Show

Following my second, more successful meeting with Kushina, things settled down into something of a pattern of improvement. With Tou-san's intense last-minute preparation, I successfully passed my Basic Instructor's level in Whirlpool fist, which allowed me to officially instruct up to (but not including) Basic Instructor level to anyone I chose.

This was about equivalent to, say, a 1st Dan (1st degree Black belt) on Earth. There was still more to learn, and much more to refine, but it showed basic expertise in the style and the trustworthiness to teach it to others. It was a pretty big deal; as Uzushio and the Uzumaki were official a military village and martial clan respectively, achieving certain levels of proficiency in any combat art came with an automatic rank in the reserves. In this case, it gave rank equivalent to a leading genin who would be 2nd in command of a 4-man genin cell, behind the traditional chunin or genin-corporal. Given my age and lack of other qualifications, I would officially be on "extended leave".

Still, if I were to be going a traditional ninja route in a place like Konoha, and became, say, an elite-track genin under a jonin leader, it meant I would automatically be the superior of my team-mates (unless they had some similar qualification). The whole thing may be a bit silly from an outside perspective, but as a mark of respect and honor, it was a big deal.

I'd never have made it so fast without my prior understanding of martial arts; I mostly had to learn the Whirling-Fist kata and combinations and philosophy, then drill muscle memory rather than learn to move and strike in the first place. Even then, it took years of training several hours a day, much of it under a Expert Instructor and combat veteran, and in later months with my muscle-memory enhanced by my mental reinforcement.

The test itself was on the kata and techniques, as well as interpretations of how the kata were applied. There was also a physical capability test, and one of my chakra reinforcement and speed. Lastly, there was a spar against an Advanced Instructor; I didn't win, but did extremely well, especially given the size disparity.

Tou-san, pleased with my success, added knife-combat to our practices at my request, and showed how the kata and combinations were modified to account for both parties being at least somewhat armed. He told me that once I was proficient with these and had passed my Advanced Instructor's test that he would start me on swordsmanship.

Tou-san also decided that I was good enough at my manipulation and canteen-jutsu to start in on my next water technique, the water-clone. Water clones were pretty interesting, since they were about the same density as the jutsu-user, and had similar speed. Thus they made for a much more realistic distraction, since they sank into the ground a similar amount, sounded the same, and had little difference in movement compared with the original.

Compare this to other clones: Illusion clones didn't interact with the environment; a glance at the feet would show them for what they were, and they made no sound. Earth based clones tended to be very heavy, and sink into the ground. More esoteric clones tend to fall under one of these two categories too, either above or below the real user's attributes. As a further, water clones would "bleed" for a bit if struck, unless so much damage was dealt that they disperse completely. Still, this could provide a split second of distraction that's needed, especially if the enemy relaxed thinking they had won.

The problem with water clones was that they were weak. While they were quick and fluid, they could not exert nearly the same maximum force on an object, and could explode if they hit something hard enough due to the shock wave. Water clones, like many other elemental clones, were also stupid. Unlike the shadow-clone of anime fame (kage-bushin), which came with an automatic duplicated intelligence, clones came with a set of commands. The greater your affinity, and the more chakra you put into them, the tougher the clones would be against shock, the longer they would last, and both more and more complex commands could be programmed. Higher affinity also helped with detail, making the clone look like the user.

Learning the clone jutsu wasn't hard. Learning how to program them, and making them a bit more lifelike in appearance, was a real challenge though. Right when I first started, most of my clones looked a bit creepy, somewhere in the "uncanny valley" along with mannequins and other humanoid objects. With time and training they improved, but while I could see the use in them, Water Clones were hardly the trump that I was looking for, and so I merely got them to an acceptable level. Eventually, I would develop or learn the shadow-clone technique for all my cloning needs. Instead, I spent a fair bit of time and focus on improving the replacement technique.

While a skilled sensor could sense it at a fair distance, and just about any jonin was skilled enough to sense the replacement if they were nearby, it was still a great way to avoid large scale attacks that were highly damaging or difficult to dodge. It was a relatively low chakra technique, and was a major precursor of the shunshin, or body flicker technique. That was definitely a technique worth mastering, especially if I could use a modified version to make me generally faster instead of just increasing burst-linear movement. I hoped that if I could get the replacement technique down to a single half-seal, or no seal at all, that Tou-san would teach me the flicker.

Eventually I reached my goal, and impressed with my dedication to the replacement technique, and satisfied with my adequate replacement technique, Tou-san showed me both the shunshin and the Mist Generation technique, similar to what Zabuza used in the fanfics I read all those years ago back on Earth. That said, Tou-san didn't train me in silent killing or anything, though I was learning some stealth stepping techniques in Whirlpool fist at the time.

Tou-san did talk about how to combine the jutsu with my natural sensor skills, and how the use the technique to create cover. It's hard to hit what you can't see, and the Mist Generation jutsu was great at quickly covering large areas in impenetrable fog. As a sensor, I had a massive advantage within it too, so long as my enemy wasn't a sensor. Another use of the technique was for when the user was heavily outnumbered – the dense fog made it difficult to coordinate with allies, and allowed the user to turn a many-vs-one fight into a series of one-on-one engagements; if they were lucky, the enemies might even get hit by friendly fire.

Tou-san also mentioned I should ask Haruto-sensei for some help with my sensor skills, as he was apparently fairly proficient himself. Tou-san and I focused a fair bit on that technique while he was training me so that I could achieve anything from a heavy fog with minimal chakra traces to imitate a real one, all the way to a spooky cloud that was so impregnated with my chakra that even sensors would not be able to locate me within it, and that those with eye-based bloodlines would find it impenetrable.

What people often mistook about ninja-based training was that it wasn't really designed to turn people into death-dealing combat gods. That was more the samurai's deal. Think about the classic genin skills: body replacement (kawarimi), illusion clone (bunshin), self-anchored illusion (henge). None of those were remotely offensive. They werere all designed so that a kid can escape and evade a large number of chakra-less or low-chakra city guardsmen, militia, or low-ranking soldiers. The Mist technique was similar; it wasn't meant to make me more deadly, it was meant to increase my survivability. And at that, it excelled.

As for my training with Kaa-san, I was learning all the seal-elements that made up the second level of seals, and developing my intuition as to how they interacted with each other. She also had me making custom explosion seals, determining the size, heat/light/concussive force mixture, color, and timing of the explosion. It was a lot of fun (who doesn't love fireworks?) but actually fairly complicated.

While they may have seemed simple, especially since Naruto had everyone tossing explosion seals about like confetti, your average explosion tag was anything but. Each one consisted of several separate sealing circuits combined into one whole seal. There was a main storage, which the user filled to power the seal. There was the indicator, that interacts with the main storage to indicate the seal was full and that the user should not feed the seal chakra unless they planned on activating the seal. Then there was the primer storage, which slowly empties; this was what the user fed a small bit of chakra when they planned on using the seal.

It turned out, the seal actually filled the primer when the user first filled the main power, so the seal needed a counter to detect whether it has been filled once (don't activate) or twice (do activate after the primer is empty); the primer emptying provided the fuse, so too thick a line there and the seal will literally take the user's hand off. Then there was a feed circuit that took the chakra from the main storage and converted it to some combination of energies with some kind of bounding to make the explosion more potent within that space. And this was just for the most basic of explosion tags.

As a fun project, Kaa-san had me set up a fireworks show, after which she promised we would start in on functional sealing scrolls to store objects. I took full advantage of the ability to experiment, and wheedled Kaa-san into teaching me a number of second and even third level boundary seals to shape the explosions.

Among the tags I made, three were particularly applicable to combat. The first I made was a high intensity directed flame attack that was hot enough to burn through a quarter inch of steel plate at thirty feet. I called it the Dragon's Breath seal. It honestly wasn't anything unique; other sealers had designed similarly motivated seals of similar efficacy, and Uzushio's shops tended to stock a good variety for qualified buyers (eg, members of our military forces).

The second tag I made was a type of semi-persistent flash-bang seal that would continue making explosions within a bounded space around the seal; these explosions were loud enough to be slightly painful, and could be bright enough to blind for up to an hour at close range. The point of the seal was to make it impossible to fight for anyone without some kind of chakra-based sensing system; as a potent sensor, this would help me, and many Uzumaki with similar skills. This, I gave the rather innocent name of a Sparkler Seal.

The third seal was by far the most complicated yet elegant. It created a bounded chakra field, then condensed the field into a three dimensional spiderweb pattern. This pattern was then itself used as a circuit, and flowed through the seal to convert the nature of the chakra to make it closer and closer to fire until it exploded. It was by far the most advanced seal I designed, as it was essentially a seal that made the surrounding air itself into a second, temporary seal.

The cool thing about the seal was that it was extremely cheap in chakra costs, since the majority of the chakra came from the local environment. Also, because the spider-web shape, it would be extremely effective at causing damage with a small actual volume of effect being used to damage large objects (ie humans) in the overall area of effect.

The use of natural chakra, and the time that the seal persisted, made it extremely suited to landmines which trapped, fed on leaked enemy chakra, and killed the enemy, but also denied the area for anywhere between a half minute and five minutes, with larger fields lasting longer. It addressed a big issue with automatic land-mine style seals, which was a field could be cleared quickly by suicide-clones; with this, the field would still be cleared, but it would take a lot longer. Considering landmines were, much like on Earth, only really useful when supported by troops, that was fine. I called it the Spider's Seal.

Kushina and Haruto-sensei were invited to the show, as were a number of extended family members, and we ate cherries and these delicious sweet bean rice buns. Kushina was very taken with the idea of being able to make fireworks, and apparently demanded that whoever it is that was teaching her sealing begin instructing her. I felt kind of guilty at that; I wasn't sure I was responsible enough to play with explosives, but Kushina sure as shit wasn't.

Hikaru jii-san, my mother's father and a full-on sealing master, was quite impressed, and told me that he would start tutoring me after Kaa-san thought I was ready. Overall, the evening was a great success. The next morning, Kaa-san started me in on sealing seals (which I still think need some sort of better name. Sadly, dimensional subspace scrolls was both somewhat in-accurate and lengthy to say), and I went back to more conventional training.

The training with Haruto-sensei was not progressing as quickly. Learning to control the chains was kind of like learning to play the piano, but with dozens of individual fingers, all of which were new and had no reflexive kinesthetic sense. And, just to make everything a bit tougher, the piano keys were made of eggshells and couldn't be broken.

I think the analogy may have escaped me a bit, but suffice to say, it was hard.

I learned how to control a pair of chains first, and how to manipulate their motion and begin to refine their shape. Apparently I was doing well and learning quickly, but it was basically learning a set of highly complicated chakra control exercises, some at a fairly long range, while also learning how to use a whip-like weapon. It didn't play to any of my pre-established strengths, and my chakra control, while excellent for someone of my age and chakra reserves, was not so instinctual that it could simply overpower these issues.

I decided that my chains would significantly benefit from some correctly applied mental reinforcement, and began to focus on reinforcing the chakra memory reflexes. While significantly more difficult than the visual eidetic memory, it was not impossible. I achieved it a bit more than a week later by enhancing the sensation of the chakra-sense and combining it with mostly emotional memory reinforcement. Interestingly emotional memory seemed more linked to chakra control than other types of memory.

There was still the issue that I was making a lot of mistakes; I didn't want to burn the wrong things into my memory, and needed to overcome that issue too. With my physical training, I could simply do the motion perfectly but slowly, then over time speed up, going faster and faster, burning the memory in again and again. But with chakra memory, that wasn't an option.

To overcome that issue, I experimented. I found that by enhancing the short term memory constantly, I would have a perfect, temporary buffer of all my chakra manipulations. When I stopped reinforcing, and in fact scrambled it a bit, the memory of mistakes would fade. Then, whenever I did something correctly, I could flash-reinforce the long term memory.

I had achieved perfect chakra memory. The technique was pretty new, and hard for me to achieve, so I could only use it in general, methodical training until it became more automatic, something which would come with practice.

The chakra memory technique wasn't perfect, since there would still be residual information from my chakra sensing and personal state, but it massively accelerated my growth in chakra manipulation, especially for my chains, chakra control exercises and elemental manipulation exercises. It also helped with removing handsigns from jutsu so I could cast faster as well as using techniques one-handed while wielding a sword in my other hand.

By the end of the month, I had completed the intermediate levels of water and wind manipulation (basic, intermediate, advanced, expert, master), and could control two chains up to twenty meters (60 feet). The chains were still a bit crude, and very far from Haruto-sensei's masterpieces, but they did now look vaguely like chains, and I could make the edges sharper and serrated. The chains could also move fast enough to catch the average chunin. My chakra reinforcement improved a bit faster too, and I started seeing better gains from my meditations and exercises, which became easier to perform in the background.

Haruto-sensei, pleased and somewhat astounded at my progress, taught me the Bubble technique. Like the Canteen technique in Water, the bubble technique was a relatively simple one. It created a bubble of pure air around the user's head, banishing dust and other particulate matter. As the user got better, he could remove harmful gasses too, and the bubble would get larger and persist for longer. The bubble technique was commonly used as a precursor to the Air-shield technique which was particularly effective against fast moving projectiles, and the more advanced vacuum-shield technique which could reduce the severity of incoming fire and lightning attacks.

Haruto-sensei also began to teach me the advanced level of wind-manipulation which consisted of the Wind-flow techniques to use a wind-sheathe to sharpen projectiles. While I had not mastered them, my progress was extremely rapid, and Haruto sensei extremely impressed.

Overall, I was doing reasonably well, but still had a long way to go to meet my objectives.

Chapter 8: Wolves

Another week later, as I was just done demonstrating my expertise in wind-flow combined with my chakra chains (I was only allowed to practice this with one chain without supervision, and two chains with, due to the inherent danger), Haruto sensei asked me a question.

"How is it that you learn these things so quickly? It took me almost a year to get these chakra flow techniques to that level. Even then, I was much older and considered a prodigy because I learned Wind techniques so easily." A bit taken aback, I decided to answer honestly. My plans needed me to have at least some influence, and I'd need people other than my parents to vouch for me. Haruto-sensei was a senior and highly respected Uzumaki combatant, sort of like Gai or Kakashi in canon Naruto.

"Ah, well, Haruto-sensei, that's a bit complicated. See, the first part is when you were learning these techniques. You were probably already in active service, right?" as he nodded, I continued. "So, you had patrol, and regular wind practice, and were probably doing shopping and chores, and physical training, team training, and maybe a girl you liked?" He smiled, and nodded again.

I nodded too. "Right. I don't have any of those distractions. I wake up, train, eat, train and sleep. Every day. In this last week alone, I've put in over ten hours of training, specifically on the wind-flow manipulation. That's probably as much training as you could put in during a month, and it being closer together helps, I think, both for my mind, and for my body's memory of the chakra manipulation." His eyes widened a bit at that, likely impressed (and perhaps a bit horrified) by my dedication at such a young age.

"That's the first reason," I continued. "The second is because I am young. Young people learn things faster, and things become part of themselves easier than for older people. It also helps that I've been practicing internal chakra manipulation before I could speak, so I think I'm more suited to using chakra than most other people, again because of how I've developed since a young age. I'm lucky, too, to have a very strong wind affinity and excellent chakra stores; I can practice full-out, using as much chakra as it takes to succeed, without worrying about being tired, so I can improve faster."

"That all makes sense," he replied, "and explains how quickly you've been learning and growing as I've been teaching. But you got a lot better just recently. Did you have some sort of epiphany?" At this, I understood what he was getting at. Chakra is partially spiritual. That's not understood enough a lot of the time, especially with lower level ninja and chakra users.

At higher levels of chakra users, many understood that the spiritual explanation was often just as important. There was a reason that few would challenge a senior monk in jutsu; certain koans or riddles meant to expand the mind were capable of inherently improving the user's chakra (typically control or elemental manipulation) once understood. This knowledge was also one of the reasons why clans had such a leg up; they had repositories of knowledge, philosophical treatises written by past masters and living experts to pass on the small, subtle, but critical hints and tricks to optimize jutsu.

Haruto wanted to know if I had discovered such an epiphany; if I had, it would be an excellent indication of my potential, and potentially a boon to the many wind-users of Uzushio. Unfortunately, I had not; I had, however, experienced kensho several times while meditating on the wind, though any claims from a child of such would be highly suspect. In truth, my deep spiritual power did massively improve my learning rate and potential, especially of this sort of deeper knowledge and personal understanding.

I shook my head. "Unfortunately, I have had no new epiphanies, though I do meditate on the wind every day. Instead, and this was what I was getting to, I've recently had a breakthrough in a technique I've been developing. From a very young age, basically as long as I can remember, I've noticed my own and others' chakra; this isn't that unusual for an Uzumaki sensor. But, I played with it, and eventually came up with internal chakra flow acceleration and chakra reinforcement. From this, and the use of yang chakra to enhance physical reinforcement, I developed the idea of using yin or mental chakra to perform mental reinforcement." Haruto was looking stunned. Probably at a combination of my ridiculous genius (not knowing my mind, at least, is older than I appear), and at my luck in not killing myself.

I took the opportunity to continue before he could explode. "I know it's dangerous. In fact, it's so crazily dangerous that I think that if I didn't have a strong regeneration potential even for an Uzumaki that I might be dead or insane or broken. And, I think you have to start young for it to work; just in sensing, I've noticed that kids' brains are more flexible and change more than adults. I think the brain becomes somewhat more resistant to change as time goes on, so it probably needs to adapt to these kinds of techniques before it gets too set, or it's even more dangerous.

"But, I was careful. First, I started with nerves outside of my brain, and reinforced them to failure until I could determine safe levels, and experimented with reinforcing nearby tissues to detect any chakra conduction or leakage issues. Then, I carefully reinforced my brain with small amounts in specific places after I meditated so I could detect any changes. I messed up, a lot, but I figured out how to safely do two things so far: I can give myself eidetic visual memory, and chakra reflex memory." Done, I gave him a moment to reflect.

"Incredible," he said with a hint of awe quickly turning to disapproval. "Truly, incredibly. Insane, poorly thought out, massively dangerous, and a remarkably poor show of judgment for someone of your intelligence, but still incredible. I'm not sure if I should praise you or punish you right now."

"It wasn't that bad a judgment!" I protested. "I survived, and am fine, aren't I? Nothing even took more than a half hour to recover from."

"First off, you didn't know that would happen when you started," he countered. "Second, you didn't think to practice on a rabbit or something, and look at long term effects? Baka!" My eyes were wide as he gave a light smack to my head to emphasize his words. "And what about interactions with genjutsu, or foreign chakra, or your future development. Why the hell did you feel the need for this anyways? You already learn faster and work harder than anyone else I've ever seen, and I'm considered a monster myself." At this, I got a lot grimmer.

"I think war is coming to Uzushio." I'd been planning a conversation like this for a while. I had the benefit of possible-future knowledge, but needed a way of convincing others. It always helped an analysis when you knew the conclusion to reach.

"What? Why?" he asked, frowning. "You can't have heard anything on a mission, and I'd know if there was any intelligence indicating an attack."

I shook my head. "No, no, it's only logic. Allow me to explain. Ninja are kind of like wolves. Fast breeding wolves. And villagers and nobles are like rabbits and deer. When there aren't very many wolves, but lots of deer and rabbits, the wolves are all happy and fed. If two wolf packs meet each other, well, they may not be friends, and some young wolves may fight to prove themselves, but there is nothing serious.

"But, a generation later, when all of these fed wolves used to plenty have bred, there are now too many wolves. If the wolves don't want to eat all their rabbits, and all their deer, so that they have more in the future, then they must take the rabbits and deer of other wolves, and protect their own. And now, when wolf-packs meet, they have reason to fight."

As I continued speaking, I could see him start to nod, understanding where I was going with the argument. "Back during the Warring Clans era, these packs were small; we, Uzushiogakure, were large enough and strong enough that none could challenge us. But now, Konoha, Iwa, Kumo, Kiri, Suna, all are large enough, and have enough allies, that they might think they could destroy us. We are known as a powerful people, and would likely task any one enemy more heavily than they could afford, but they may alliance against us. Suna is isolated, and has no interest in a nation of islands. Konoha are our allies, so they may be ignored. But for Iwa, Kumo and Kiri I fear this is not the case."

My voice was soft and grimly resolute. "Uzushio's alliance with Konoha is dangerous. We are strong, yes, and our sealers present an increase in combat potential that scales very well with numbers, so we make Konoha much stronger than it would be alone. In return, we get intelligence services and ninja to call upon. But, the problem with creating danger to others is it makes them have reason for your destruction.

"Iwa hates Konoha, partially due to their Kages. To defeat Konoha, an excellent first move would be to remove us. Looking at a map, it seems improbable. Until you consider that Kumo too has reason to remove us. They are a militarily focused village, and our fleets and forces present a raiding threat on their seaward flank if they ever enter conflict with Konoha. Further, our destruction would weaken Konoha. If Iwa allies with Kumo to deal with us, then they need only pass through territories whose ninja look to either Iwa or Kumo for leadership.

"Lastly, Kiri resents us for two reasons. First, we are a challenge to their dominance over ninja affairs involving ships; while ours fly under Whirlpool's Daimyo's flag, ninja care little for our distinctions. Second, we are a threat to their philosophy; Uzushio, which treats its citizens well, and cares little for bloodshed, is significantly more profitable and prosperous than Kirigakure with it's focus on blood and killing. This is a threat to them internally, as our very example of continued existence gives lie to the idea that they must be brutal killers to survive. Thus, Kiri too has cause to desire our destruction.

"What then would these wolves gain if they were to turn on us? Iwa would weaken Konoha. Kumo would expand into the territories to the North East of the Land of Fire as Iwa pushes in from the North West. And Kiri would gain our own territories, and might be allowed to operate with impunity up and down the coast.

"So, I have established that wolves fight for territory when hungry, and that they have cause to want our territory. The only question, then, is are they hungry? And I fear that the answer is becoming yes, in these years. It has been a generation since the last war, and the villages are finally seeing this new generation come into its own. Full of notions of glory and mastery, and with a limited pool of resources which can be gleaned from the nobles, merchants and civilians, these wolves have already started to growl at each other from the edges of their territories. Judging by our increased usage of Konoha ninja to conduct anti-pirate operations by folding up the organized criminal groups that deal with their money and goods on the mainland, I would guess that the missions have become cheaper, which would only happen if Konoha's supply of ninja were higher.

"Further, you should remember that these wolves have little knowledge of the fire of our seals. They likely don't realize how capable Uzushio is, since we do not compete with them. Instead, we protect our people and live our lives. But for wolves who survive without making anything, and only eat the fat of the land, we likely appear weak and impotent. Where we see restraint, they see weakness, protectiveness, cowardice. Their leaders may recall well that Uzushio created the Jinchuriki, and fear our power, but this will only serve to temper their plans with caution while being driven by the arrogance of their rank and file.

"I would guess that we have anywhere from a year to a decade before the wolves are at each others' throats, but fear that we will feel their bite first. If pressed, I would estimate three years before these wolves are at our doors. To be sure in our preparations, we should be ready in two. As a somewhat known prodigy, I may be a target. In extremis, I will be deployed; after all, officially, I am already in the reserves as an assistant instructor of Whirlpool Fist. But most importantly, I want to do everything I can to ensure our survival."

As I finished my speech, Haruto looked somewhat sad. He knelt down, looking me in the eye, and pulled me into a hug for several seconds. Drawing away, he held me at arms length and wryly smiled.

"You truly are incredible," he said. "And I think you may be right concerning the current situation; this is something I will bring up with Kazuo-sama when I have tea with him later this week. But it should not be your concern, especially not so young. That said, now that I know about your unique technique – which will not be taught to others, or ever, ever mentioned to those who might foolishly try and copy it – I will be training you harder than every before. By the end of the year, I expect you to have mastered the expert level of wind manipulation, a year after that, be an acknowledge wind master. I also expect that you will achieve a proficiency in your chains at least equal to mine when I was thirty. Does that sound like fun?"

I blanched a bit; by the age of thirty, Haruto was already known as the Razor-Wind after a battle against a clan of ninja that also operated as a major crime family. They had attempted to expand into Wave, and had killed a detachment of Uzushio village-guard attached to the local garrison. Haruto, their commander at the time, had walked into the clearing near the capital where the criminals were gathered, and killed all forty-eight of them with a minute.

Haruto's wires were so thin that they would float on a breeze. Per the story, he floated the wires in as a cloud around him using passive wind manipulation rather than an active technique. When the enemy refused to surrender, he whipped up a bit of a squall while using wind-flow. The wire-chains whipped around, slicing through everything and everyone.

A large clean-up seal was used for all human biological material. Apparently one had been cut into four pieces; this was the fewest number of pieces for a single person out of the whole group. The largest number of pieces was twenty four. The seal was then sent as a warning to the criminal ninja clan home on the mainland. No one from that clan has been seen in Whirlpool territory since.

So, when Haruto said he'd be training me to that level, and expected me to achieve it within my stated two years, as well as all his other chain techniques by that age, I was understandably a bit daunted. It was nice of him though; he didn't want me to worry too much about a possible invasion, but thought I could handle being prepared to a level which would help whether I was or was not attacked.

Of course, that wouldn't stop me from worrying, and preparing. I did, after all, have my goal. Uzushio would not fall.

Chapter 9: Kiyoshi's return.

About a month and a half after the conversation with Haruto-sensei I was practicing when I noticed the signal for the return of the sixth escort group, which was the group that cousin Kiyoshi's unit was assigned to. I was so excited to see him and show him everything I learned, especially after he'd been on patrol for months, even coming back late.

Well, maybe I wouldn't tell him about my mental reinforcement. I'd further improved that to the point where I could now achieve near perfect physical reflex memory, as well as logic processing speed boosts and a semi-accidental skill in memorizing chakra-sensing memories (which I used almost like a budget Sharingan but more limited to the basics than something with hand-signs). Unfortunately I wasn't yet at the point of having the full suite of enhancements. I wouldn't want Kiyoshi, who was somewhat young and thought himself immortal, to practice mental reinforcement and break himself.

But I'd certainly mention everything else I've learned, and rub in how quickly I was growing.

Tou-san had started me on swords after declaring my speed "acceptable for a new chunin" while reinforced, as well as refining the expert level of water manipulation which I was almost fully through. I could fully shunshin within a quarter second and a half-hand-sign too. Haruto-sensei meanwhile had put me at "three, maybe four years worth of my own chains skill on a good day," and after a fair bit of focus on my wind manipulation exercises had declared me ready to start in on the mastery exercises, though I still practiced expert level exercises too.

Both Tou-san and Haruto-sensei were focused on the basics of elemental chakra manipulation since I had time to learn and it would make future techniques easier. That said, they had taught the basic Wind/Water bullet and Wind/Water blade. Mostly because the former was a useful technique to practice rapid elemental projection, while the latter was good for shape control.

Kaa-san too was pleased with my progress; I could write basic dimensional seals and had developed second level intuition. She was already teaching me her own warding/area-control specialty and how to write seals with chakra alone. After I learned enough of that, she was planning on passing me off to Hikaru jii-san to continue my education. In all, my skills would have been promising as a fifteen year old. I wasn't yet five.

It was the afternoon, and I was training with Haruto-sensei when I saw it. "Sensei! Look, the sign that Kiyoshi-nii's back."

"Excellent. I know you won't be able to focus, so why don't we go down and greet him?" I nodded, grinned, and disappeared in a shunshin a moment later, reappearing at the docks. Haruto followed, and we both watched as a small fleet limped into port.

The ships, particularly the escorts, were damaged. One showed extensive burns, another was missing a mast, the third escort appeared fine until it completed a turn and revealed a massive gash through the side. I was somewhat surprised it was even sea-worthy like that.

A number of harbor-patrol water-users went out in smaller boats and shepherded the ships in to dock. Medics rushed on board, some returning at a sprint towards the hospital carrying people on stretchers. I was starting to worry; the ships had obviously met with trouble. But, I told myself, Kiyoshi was strong, and so he should have been alright.

We waited as people began leaving the ship, but didn't see Kiyoshi. Next to us a family was re-united with what I was guessing was their uncle, the mother of the group's brother. Next, he came over to us.

"Daichi-kun?" he asked hesitantly.

"Yes, Patrol-sergeant san?" I read from his uniform.

"You probably don't remember me, but Kiyoshi introduced us when we were leaving on patrol. I'm very sorry to tell you this. We were attacked by pirates led by ninja, missing Mist-nins. Kiyoshi fought like an eagle, and saved many lives, but he didn't make it. He was a true hero of Whirlpool. I'm sorry for your loss."

I was stunned. Haruto's hand tightened on my shoulder, a reassurance. I just… didn't know what to think. For all my personal experiences, I was unfamiliar with others, especially those I cared about dying. I mean, some oldest members of the family had died back on Earth, but that was the natural state of things. Oh, I hated it, the idea of death, but at least they lived full lives.

I'd had a couple close friends in the military who went aviation, which was a dangerous community more from training accidents than enemy action; I'd worried at the time, but both had survived. And because I died young, I didn't have to deal with others that were close to me, or young, or what have you dying. So, I was in shock.

But manners were something that both sets of parents had drilled me in, and that's how I defaulted.

"My thanks for your consideration, Patrol-sergeant san," I replied shakily with a bow. The man looked a bit sad, clapped me on the shoulder, and left with his family. For that time, maybe a minute, maybe a bit longer, I just stood there, processing. Eventually Haruto broke me out of it.

"Are you alright, Daichi?"

"No, sensei. No, I'm not. I'm sad, and angry. I want to know why this happened," I said, closing my eyes for a moment, blinking back the tears. "Can you look into reports of attacks by missing-nin, especially from Mist, over the last six months? Also how many ships or patrol groups have gone missing?"

I was still in shock; my mind was working, but the emotional parts of it were almost totally shut down. Honestly, at the time I don't think I was even really aware that I was speaking; I had been blind-drunk once as a university student, and this felt very similar.

"Sure, Daichi. I can do that. What do you want to do now?" he said softly in his deep tone. His voice was calming and familiar, his hand comforting and reassuring; the combination helped break me out of my state a bit more.

"We need to go home. I need to tell Kaa-san." It was going to be rough. Kiyoshi was in between my parents age and my own. He had a sort of younger-brother relationship with Kaa-san, and an older-brother / cool young uncle relationship with me.

"You know we don't need to go immediately. We could get some food, or go destroy a training ground," he offered.

I shook my head. As much of a relief as that would be, it wasn't the right thing to do. "No, Haruto-sensei. If Kiyoshi could die to protect us, it's the least we owe him to tell Kaa-san myself."

"Alright, Daichi. But you do know this isn't your fault, right?" he asked.

I did, but it still hurt. "Of course not. This is a matter of duty, not guilt."

And so we left for my home, walking this time as I needed the time to come to grips with this and had no desire for the motion and discombobulation of shunshin at that moment. About a quarter hour later, we were home, and I went into Kaa-san's sealing study.

"Kaa-san," I started, but suddenly my mouth was dry, my throat shut.

"What is it Daichi?" she turned around, and saw me, and knew (as would any good mother) that something was deeply wrong. "What's wrong Daichi, what happened?"

"It's Kiyoshi. He, *sigh* he didn't make it."

"Oh no." And, as I started to cry, she swept over, kneeling, and pulled me into a tight hug. "Oh Daichi, it will be all right. Shh, shh." And then and there, in my Kaa-san's arms, crying about my dead cousin, I decided I'd do whatever it took to ensure war never came to Uzushio's shores. If only out of a selfish desire to minimize this feeling in the future.

Kirigakure, the aggressive, Bloody Mist, was the only power willing or capable of challenging Uzushio at sea.

Kirigakure was already a dead village. They just didn't know it yet.

I just had to figure out how.

My training continued over the days, then weeks, then months following Kiyoshi's death. I came up with so many plans, discarding most of them.

First, I thought about guns; I'd thought of them before, but decided not to because it would hurt Uzushio in the end. Then I found out that they weren't even possible.

The Elemental Countries were actually in some sort of post-apocalyptic world. I didn't know (and never found out) if it was high-energy reality warping physics, or some early jutsu, or alien-space bats, or an alien-space bat jutsu, or a seal, or divine intervention or the vagaries of Chaos and the Warp that caused it. But as a side effect of whatever had destroyed civilization, gunpowder didn't work how it did on Earth.

In fact, chemical explosions in general did't, even purely chemical flames weren't as effective as I remembered them being. I hadn't been able to get conclusive proof on the mechanism, but it seemed that if something with low chakra potential was burning, it had to create fire-natured chakra too.

This conceptual bond between physics and metaphysics was extremely interesting, especially because it meant that any gun equivalent needed to run on seals or chakra mechanisms. Chakra conductive materials, especially neutrally-conductive metal, were ruinously expensive; only the very elite could be armed with any weapon system that required it. So, seals were the way to go for a gun-system. And Uzushio had an effective monopoly on deploying tactical seals beyond a few basic explosives or lower-rank dimensional sealing scrolls.

The design concept I eventually came up with was something inspired by the space-marine storm bolter. It was a seal on the arm that could launch projectiles or laser bursts or jutsu like plasma bolts. Of those, I actually preferred the laser bursts; there was no reason for it to be visible, and jonin with speed specialties were sometimes able to dodge or block the bullets.

Plus, lasers didn't make noise that gives away location. Lasers weren't actually that difficult to make using seals either, were relatively low energy cost for their effect, and were more restricted by peoples' lack of scientific knowledge than anything else. Secondary firing modes could easily blind or signal. The seal on the arm linked to a HUD seal that projected onto the eye; it relayed where the user was aiming, how much energy was being put into each shot, firing mode, and remaining energy reserves.

Overall, this was a design I could accomplish by the time I'd achieved level 4 intuition, which I estimated was likely to be achieved sometime close to my fifth birthday. The design was somewhat complicated, but relatively simple compared to most body-seals, to the point that sealing adepts could install them with a medic available in case of any emergency (most Uzumaki Combat Body-Seals, especially those that link into the chakra network, need a sealing expert or even master, as well as a full doctor to be done safely).

I estimated that with the expected complexity, enough could be produced for all chunin equivalents and above, and with a serious push, enough could be made for the genin as well. With this seal, genin should have a decent chance against chunin, and chunin should be relatively sure of killing other chunin. Jonin would still be a major threat since they tended to have a lot of tricks, stealth and adaptability. Still, survivability of Uzushio forces would substantially increase, especially in the first days of war before enemy countermeasures and intelligence caught up with the threat. But while an excellent seal, and one that I fully planned on developing, it wasn't enough to make Uzushio impossible to invade.

Second, I thought about air-support, partially inspired by looking at Kazuo-sama's gift of a pair of flying Osprey while lying in bed. Air-support excelled at recon, strategic strikes and tactical support as well as communications and transportation. It was totally different from what the Elemental Countries expected too; after the fall of the Sky village close to the founding of the Five Great Villages decades ago there had been no significant aerial assets. Even better, seals allowed for super-efficient aircraft, since fuel and payload took up no space or weight.

I was planning a set of three general UAVs or drones, and two special purpose ones.

The largest, which I was calling the Osprey after the premier summons of the village, was planned to be optimized for long deploy-times with station-keeping, a higher ceiling and longer range sensors and some powerful munitions. It would mostly be deployed over fixed installations or as a strategic asset by force-commanders. It would also be able to deploy a stealth-ed summoning circle to teleport in troops.

The middle sized model, which I was calling the Sea-hawk after another, slightly less powerful summons, was planned to fill the tactical mission profile. It would have a decent range, strong mid-ranged sensors, and be designed mostly for anti-personnel combat with machine-gun, laser, and rocket equivalents, as well as optional seals for heavier anti-field-fortification munitions.

The smallest, which I was calling the Peregrine, after another bird summons in the village, would be designed for more covert and close support missions. The least armed, I planed for the Peregrine to only have lasers and rockets, but upgraded with basic stealth and hover capacity, as well as the ability to fold the wings in and grip onto trees or other solid structures and act as a turret.

The two special purpose drones would be for underground and underwater combat respectively. The Mole, designed for underground combat, would have a special transportation seal to temporarily seal dirt, then move forward, then unseal the dirt behind it. The mole would be designed to send out seismic shocks and interpret the readings, as well as look for enemy chakra, and release targeted burrower-missiles to detonate the enemy, or use a limited seismic jutsu recreated via seals to crush them.

Similarly the Swordfish, designed for underwater combat, would similarly search for enemy ninja, though could also launch their seeker-torpedoes at ships. Unlike the fliers, the special purpose drones were designed to be somewhat permanent, though could be recalled to refill chakra reserves.

Overall, these drones would massively improve Uzushio's defensibility, assuming I could actually make them – I hadn't quite figured out that part yet. Many of the functions I wanted required 5th level seals; some, especially the communications net that I wanted and some of the sensors, required 6th level seals. Further, each drone would be far more complicated than the hand-laser and HUD seals.

If I wanted to achieve this, I'd likely have to settle for just the Sea-Hawk to start, and still enlist the aid of Hikaru jii-san and some of the other masters. That said, it was a cool project and they'd likely be interested; everyone loves toys that fly, after all.

Creating enough drones to be widely deployed, and keeping them safe from being stolen or copied, was something of a challenge. Assuming I got higher level sealer support, an automated seal-creator and significant security upgrades were not unreasonable expectations though. With sufficient drones deployed throughout the force, Whirlpool and Uzushio would effectively be impossible to invade or destroy in a conventional fashion; I fully planned on completing at least the Sea-Hawk if I had the time to do so.

The problem was that I had thought of the laser and the drones before Kiyoshi's death. While excellent in defense, it would still be far too costly to use these to destroy Kirigakure, not to mention that I wanted to do so without anyone else knowing; Uzushio hardly needed the kind of heat that that would bring.

And I was adamant on the necessity of Kirigakure's destruction; Haruto's investigation had shown a sharp uptick of Mist "missing-nin" attacks, though reports from other friendly Daimyos did not report heightened levels of Mist missing-nin activity along their coastline or otherwise. Clearly it was a black-flag operation, and the Mist would keep looking for ways to destroy us until one or the other were destroyed.

No, I decided, regular weapons were not the way to go. I had been thinking too small; instead of a weapon, I need a Weapon of Mass Destruction. And so, a week after Kiyoshi's ship returned without him, I began to come up with possibilities.

The first idea that I had was a seal-driven nuclear bomb. It was something I was familiar with, and as seals allow conversion of lots of different types of energy, I thought it might be achievable. It turned out, seals made nuclear explosions absolutely impossible. The problem was that a seal converts things through chakra, and it was unfortunately the case that through chakra, while matter still has a lot of energy, it wasn't enough to be making a WMD out of.

The Creation of All and I guess the reverse, the Destruction of All, were possibilities allowed by upper level seals, but were also too expensive in chakra to make any kind of chain reaction. And there was no way I could manage to duplicate an entire nuclear program on my own, even with seals to help with containment and such. I simply didn't have the time, or even the theoretical background.

The second possibility that I thought of was massively scaled-up conventional chakra bombs, maybe ones similar to my Spider's Seal. It turns out that that would basically require heavy carpet-bombing. It would definitely be traced back, and at a guess likely cause no more than forty percent casualties, primarily in the weaker ranks and civilians.

I immediately discarded the third and fourth possibilities: chemical or biological warfare. Chemical weapons were less effective as they weren't infused with the chemical's natural chakra; that was an extremely chakra-intensive concept. Further, I really didn't want to introduce chemical warfare to the Elemental Nations, and had no easy way of getting the chemicals I'd need in the proper scale. Biological WMDs are always, always, always a horrible idea. They would inevitably backfire, either when new bioweapons are used in a retaliation, or as the disease infected everyone, mutating and spreading beyond control. So, just, no.

The fifth idea I had, based on the chemical weapon idea, was a poor-man's Alchemical Bomb. I'd either concentrate oxygen by creating a partial gas boundary, or concentrate nitrogen. In the first case, I'd immolate the village; in the second, I'd wait for them to suffocate. While I marked this down as a possibility, the odds that someone would notice made me wary; even a Kirigakure sealer can break something with sufficient power, or evacuate the village. The odds were far too low that it would work.

It was while I was wishing that I could make a Bond-villain super-laser work as easily as villains seemed to in the movies when I thought of my sixth idea: Rods from God, or God's Hammer as I'd seen it referred to in a fiction whose title I'd long since forgotten. More technically, Orbital Kinetic Energy Weapons, or Kinetic Orbital Strikes.

Basically, large rods, preferably made of Tungsten, though seal-enhanced iron and stone would do at a pinch, launched from orbit. If I remembered right from when I read about this sort of thing way back when, I'd manage to get a speed in excess of Mach ten, and a blast damage equivalent to somewhere between ten and a hundred tons of TNT. That could be fatal to even stronger ninja out at five hundred feet, and destroy even reinforced buildings at one hundred feet distance.

A look at a map of Kirigakure, much of it blank due to being in a security restricted area, and I calculated that a spread of twenty five rods would be sufficient to get, at a guess, eighty percent destruction given the generally wooden construction in the ninja-populated region of their village. Another five rods for their Kage's seat of government, one for their central records facility, one each for a trio of barracks, one for the academy and a pair for the docks and shipyards and Kirigakure would be completely unable to wage war.

I had a winner.

As far as seals-based WMDs went, KOS (Kinetic Orbital Strike) was almost embarrassingly easy. If I were being particularly cunning and kludge-y, I could have probably done it with level three seals. Less kludge-y, level four. To penetrate the village anti-kinetic shields (which every village had, probably for things like this), and do so with a bit of elegance and real time visual feeds, I would need level five seals, and about four months of my total chakra output. Call it a year of my spare output.

That was it. Level five seals and a year's chakra to obliterate one of the great villages.

I had my goal, I had my method. All that was left was the execution.

Chapter 10: God's Hammer

The next year passed in a blur of training as I pushed myself to become stronger and learn seals at a greater and greater rate. Soon, I had surpassed the limits of my Kaa-san's teaching and entered Hikaru jii-san's tutelage.

Hikaru jii-san was pretty amazing; he was a full sealing master who focused on manipulating natural forces and properties like gravity, pure kinetic energy, mass and heat. Apparently while a younger man, and studying to become a master, he had invented the cooling seals that we use even to this day in food-stores and wealthier homes. That's right, another reason to love Uzushio – we had air conditioning. And that was yet another way that I knew Kiri was evil; no one else would try and rob the world of civilization air-conditioning, the hallmark of civilization.

Hikaru jii-san was also an accomplished combat-sealer. A fairly old man now of over a century's age, when he was about 60 and still in his prime (Uzumaki, remember), around the time that the Villages were starting to really form, he had been part of a four-man trade mission to Konoha (sealing scrolls meant that nothing else was needed for transport).

A whole clan that was against the idea of forming ninja villages attacked the mission. Under Hikaru's order, the Uzushio forces retreated until they came to a fairly empty field, where they seemingly decided to each make a break for it in the hope of escaping the hundred or so pursuers, leaving Hikaru behind to slow pursuit.

Suffice to say, Hikaru's guard had split up to plant territory-defining seals, not to flee.

The enemy ninja decided to go after Hikaru jii-san first, and charged across the field only for the entire surface of the field to suddenly become hot enough to ignite clothing. Hikaru jii-san had used a heat-concentration seal that moved heat from the ground to the air up to a height of 10 feet, and roasted all the enemy ninja.

So, yeah, gramps was kind of a badass.

I had completed the basics of my mental reinforcement, though I was always refining those basic techniques with practice. Under his eye, and making full use of these techniques, I quickly worked my through the third and fourth levels of sealing, earning complete intuition with each. Soon I was focused on the intuition for fifth level seals, particularly those needed for the God's Hammer project, as well as some sixth level seals that he had given me access to.

In my spare time, I had already completed my basic laser/ directed energy weapon that I called the DEWS-1 (Daichi-Energy-Weapon-Seal-1). It had proved a bit more complicated than I expected, as I experienced issues with thermal bloom and efficiency that necessitated a high-intensity pulse at a frequency which would interact with human liquids and fats but not be absorbed overmuch by air or common solids. It was still most effective at damaging softer and unarmored targets.

I also had a few bits and pieces of what would become the Sea-Hawk, but had not completed it, or even enough of a proof of concept to bring to Hikaru jii-san.

Tou-san had continued my instruction in Whirling-Fist, and I had completed both the Intermediate and Advanced Instructor's tests. My speed could match the minimum standard for jonin, and if fully enhanced, I was capable of matching most of the younger chunin in strength despite my lack of size. My swordsmanship was also developing; I had passed the Basic Instructor's test, and Tou-san had said that I was good enough to qualify for the clan-guard on the basis of my swordsmanship alone, which was fairly high praise.

My combat skills with the Adamantine Chains was becoming very advanced. Haruto-sensei, though now a father himself, and thus with less time to train me, had nonetheless gotten me past the manipulation and manifestation and even elemental channeling lessons. I still needed to continue to train and improve here, but was at the point that it was practice and the occasional hint once I hit a plateau; I had the basics and the training methods I needed. He had further started me in on mechanical manipulation techniques, things like how to use the chains as a drill, or saw, rather than as a piercing whip or flail, as well as the more advanced Seal-channeling techniques needed for the Adamantine Chains to become the full Adamantine Sealing Chains.

My elemental chakra training had perhaps seen the furthest growth. I was practicing the Water and Wind master level manipulation exercises, and could achieve results similar to B-level jutsu with a bit of focus and pure elemental manipulation. I had practiced the Water-Dragon, Water-Prison, Crushing Wave and Raging Waters techniques to a high degree for my water techniques, and similarly focused on Vacuum Bullets, Slicing Storm (a large scale slicing attack with medium damage), Razor Gust (smaller scale but more damage), Tornado and Hurricane (effective against large numbers, disrupted ranged jutsu) wind-based techniques.

I hadn't been overly impressed with the shields from either wind or water, and had worked on some layered, collaborative Wind/Water techniques that were more useful. My Pressurized Bubbles Shield, for example, functioned a bit like reactive armor and could be used offensively in close range as the explosive concussion would deal a fair bit of damage.

I also had a fairly long range and relatively low cost Water-Jet-Cutter techniques which I had invented; based on water-jet cutters back on Earth, it used Wind to accelerate Water with bits of the ground in it to ridiculous speeds (easily above Mach one, but more than that was hard to estimate). The technique was capable of cutting through a half inch of steel in a moment. Even worse for its victims, the Water-Jet-Cutter would leave behind all the solid particles which would cripple or kill those for whom the technique was not instantly lethal.

I wanted to start learning more advanced general chakra control, as well as genjutsu (illusions) and medical ninjutsu but unfortunately didn't have the training time to do more than read the occasional theoretical text.

Overall, I was almost six years old, and I was a monster capable of at least facing Elite Jonin (oh, they'd kill me, but if it were one of our elites versus an enemy I might be enough to turn the tides). But what would really make me a monster wasn't the fact that I was so much stronger than someone my age should be, but the project I had just finished: God's Hammer, the set of seals that would achieve a Kinetic Orbital Strike on Kirigakure. And that weekend, I was finally ready for the first trial.

The idea was a pretty simple one. The issue with getting things into orbit wasn't that it took so much energy to lift the payload; it was that the energy itself needed to be raised too, so you weren't just lifting the potential satellite which might only be a few tens of pounds, but all the fuel too which would weigh hundreds of tons.

With seals, that wasn't an issue; I actually used a gravity-effecting seal to lift the payload seal into orbit. Once in orbit, the payload seal would deploy the Kinetic Weapons, a series of thirty-seven eight-foot long, foot wide, seal-reinforced cylinders of metal that I had gathered from some hills rich in metals using resource-collection and refinement seals.

The plan was for the payload seal to reach orbit, then deploy the weapons. The weapons were heavily sealed themselves, primarily with a station-keeping seal to keep them at the right orientation and spacing, as well as gravity-acceleration seals and very precise location and guidance seals to move them at the right target.

Actually, the most difficult part of all of this was the targeting system. Not only did the guidance and movement system need to be incredibly precise and finely gradated, but I needed a very precise location reading of where Kirigakure was in 3-dimensional space. In fact, to avoid relativity issues (something all GPS calculations back on Earth need to manage), the calculations for which I had forgotten, I needed a no-lag communication between the beacon and the guidance system.

This communication was one of the major focuses of my research with Hikaru jii-san, and was also the first step for my creating a Hiraishin knock-off. I also had a visual-transmission communication seal, and backup maneuvering seals to do manual targeting if necessary.

As the weapons approached atmospheric re-entry, they would activate a dimensional-contraction technique. I'd totally cribbed the seal from one Hikaru jii-san had demonstrated at my request, as he hadn't realized the extent of my memory when I desired. The dimensional-contraction technique was a rare conceptual seal, and actually stored the space in a special temporal seal. Then, at a very low altitude, the stored space would be expended to make the cylinders much wider for all but the weapons aimed at the Kage's fort.

This would improve the damage, at a cost of reduced penetration through bunkers, as well as increasing the velocity (and thus kinetic energy) of the weapons by reducing drag while falling, and so further increasing damage. Also at that moment of impact, another seal would activate a "dense air shield" above them, reducing the amount of explosive pressure and damage lost to the air and hopefully reflecting the shock-wave back at the village to maximize damage.

To reach Kirigakure in the first place, each weapon had a Shield Breaking seal designed to penetrate the bombardment defenses. Finally, there were storage seals that would release fire chakra when the weapons impacted; this would melt whatever remnants of the cylinders existed, and hopefully spread secondary fires and destruction.

I had had to do a lot of work on not just the seals, but on how to create the seals. I tested them in vacuum, and in low temperatures, and both at once. In an early test, I sent a probe into low orbit with a chakra-sensing device; it turned out that space, being empty of chakra, actually drained chakra at a very high rate, and so I had to develop a chakra retention shield seal, and apply it to all of the objects.

I had similarly tested the deployment of the payload, and discovered that retrieving an object from a storage seal gets harder the greater the difference in potential energy between entering and leaving the seal. I actually had to develop a new, stacked, super-high efficiency chakra storage system based on fractal capacitance just to retrieve the weapons; the seals on that needed to be so finely etched to be small enough that it took a week just to get the technique right. Hikaru jii-san and the other sealers were quite impressed by the new chakra batteries, and adopted my designs for small but energy intensive applications which meant a nice residual income from my invention.

Worried that the weapons might hit an object in orbit, and that if that caused a failure I'd never know why, I developed a special chakra sensing pulse seal that only worked out of atmosphere without any distracting chakra signals; it was basically a space-radar with a thousand kilometer range that recorded back to a signal storage seal I had, making a status update every micro-second.

Then, with all the planning and testing done, I actually had to charge all of these; I had been storing a full quarter of my prodigious full reserves every night for eight months for this purpose.

When I had finally finished, and was ready to test the weapons, I didn't know what to think about them.

On the one hand, I was ecstatic. Here I was, a genius, granted. A reincarnation, granted. And effectively a magician, granted. But here I was, a kid, in a society stuck in the Middle Ages. And I had managed to make something that was Science Fiction during the beginning of the 21st century.

On the other hand, I was at least somewhat somber. Here was the protection of Uzushiogakure, the destruction of the enemy Kirigakure that would ensure our survival for a century. But, also, I think I understood Oppenheimer in that moment. I had truly become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

And I did so under no recognizance but my own. I was prepared to destroy a village, kill potentially hundreds of thousands of people. And this terrified me. I wanted to ask Haruto jii-san's opinion, talk to Tou-san and Kaa-san, even ask Kazuo-sama.

I wanted absolution from the responsibility of deploying this monstrosity of a weapon. But I knew I couldn't get it. This was my decision, my responsibility.

And so, on that Sunday morning, I deployed the weapon.

Everything was going well. The payload-scroll had reached orbit, and reported successful deployment of all weapons. Weapons had locked onto Kirigakure, and were gaining velocity on their approach vectors. Velocity had hit a bit over what I estimated to be Mach three. And then, one by one, I lost contact with the weapons.

What the FUCK just happened? How the fuck? I can't have just… My mind was a mess. I didn't know what to think, what might happen. Hell, the weapons might still hit, but I wouldn't know where. If that was the case, and they were off target enough to damage but not destroy Kirigakure, we might want to evacuate the village to reduce the target we presented. My shield breaker's were standard, known designs, but were fairly recently published, only available to other Uzumaki sealers, and I'd overpowered them with a ton of chakra.

I started pouring over the feedback data from all the sensors to see if I could figure out what happened.

The first five weapons didn't have any anomalies. Just, there one moment, gone the next. I started looking at the chakra space radar readings, and saw that each one seemed to have been broken up into what looked like, if I was reading the results right, a cloud of gas or maybe plasma, as well as a few shards of the weapon.

Looking at the heat readings, which were on a significantly slower response time, I did see that the weapons noticed a slight heat rise with each destruction, and that one of the weapons had noticed a sharp temperature spike, into the thousands of degrees C, just before failure. Another had caught what I was now thinking might have been part of a reflected laser beam, and experienced a few hundred degrees temperature rise, then later been destroyed.

Someone, or something, was up there. And they had the capacity to track thirty seven small objects flying at Mach three, and hit them with what I was guessing was a laser strong enough to vaporize them despite the fact that they were enhanced to be able to survive re-entry.

That, that was fucking terrifying. But for a moment, I couldn't worry about that.

I packed up my things with shaking hands, walked back to my room, sat down, and cried.

It had been a long fucking year. I had been pushing myself, especially the envelope of my mental reinforcement, really damned hard. I was wiped out, physically, emotionally, burning too hard and too fast. And that day had been when it was all meant to pay off; the pressure would be off of Uzushiogakure, and the pressure would be off of me. But then, then whatever had done that decided to fuck everything up, and so I cried.

I was still a kid. Sue me.

About a half hour later, I stopped crying and started thinking. I considered who or what might have stopped my plan. Gods and other such beings were immediately disregarded; there was no chakra presence at all, and my understanding of the local Laws of Reality made me think that divine intervention was unlikely.

In fact, on further reflection, I didn't think it was a "someone". Other humans or aliens might have made contact with the precocious fuck (me) who introduced Orbital Bombardment to a civilization who's most advanced weapon was made of re-folded chakra conductive steel. Or they might have killed me. Or at least done something; it seemed unlikely they would just kill my weapons then ignore me.

That left "something". I remembered that the world was, at one point at least, high technology, but had fallen; further, chakra seemed limited to the planet, and didn't cross the void of space well. What if the chakra was what interfered with the regular operation of high level technology? Then, any orbital assets would have survived.

I doubted that there was anyone living there; if they really wanted to, there were too many ways of getting into contact, ways that weren't used, and if anyone was living there, then the weapons probably wouldn't have been totally automated. I doubted any residents of this hypothetical space station would still be keeping to battle-stations thousands of years after the planet dropped out of contact, and thus doubted that an occupied station would have so quickly managed to destroy my weapons. Plus, a hundred-percent efficient food recycling program seemed unlikely, and anything less would have resulted in starvation after so long.

No, I suspected that there was either an AI or a complex computer controlling some Strategic Defense hunter-killer satellites. Maybe even orbital fortresses. Either way, it was likely set to destroy any ICBMs or similar weapons. But that was all I could hypothesize. Other things were, of course, possible. I just rated my conclusion as the likeliest possibility.

The scenario that seemed likely was not favorable towards me. I had no idea how to get around the situation. There were, of course, things I could test, like whether it was the speed of the weapons that caused the attack, or the height, or some combination of the two. I could probably design a shield to redirect laser-fire around my weapons. But ultimately, I didn't think it was a good idea to mess about with the unknown orbital power with super-lasers unless I wanted to risk retaliatory bombardment, especially since I didn't know what kind of Orbit-to-Ground weapons it might have.

A year's work was down the drain, totally useless.

Well, maybe not totally useless. And so I tried out a basic estimation: My kinetic weapons would still function as missiles; at a restriction of Mach two-point-five (a safe margin of error on velocity calculations), they would have less than a sixteenth the energy at impact compared to Mach 10, and only be effective at around two-fifth's the previous distance.

That meant the new missiles could be killing ninja at two hundred feet and destroying buildings at forty feet. The problem with this was that I'd need something like six hundred of these weaker rods to achieve similar levels of destruction. I just didn't have the time to gather that much metal.

I had no idea what I was going to do. I could only train and practice and hope I came up with some other way forward. Well, that and continue to store my chakra in case I needed it.

And maybe take a bit of a break before I burned out.

Chapter 11: Stepping Back.

Following the intervention of the Orbital ex Machina into my plans for Kirigakure's neutralization, I decided I needed to take a step back, and stop to enjoy life a bit more. I decided to focus on making sure Uzushiogakure survives, and took a rest on the whole destruction of Kiri until I came up with a better plan, one that didn't possibly annoy the hypothetical Orbital Fortress with unknown threat-assessment algorithms.

I had been uncomfortably close to burning out, closer than I had even realized. I asked Tou-san to teach me Shogi, learned Go from Hikaru jii-san, and asked Kaa-san for some recommendations on good books to read. Every day, I made sure to take at least two hours for personal relaxation, and one whole day off every week. Evenings would typically find me playing a game with family, or reading a book while sipping green tea.

And god was it necessary. I found that my food intake, previously near five thousand calories a day, dropped down to three thousand (I lived an active lifestyle with high chakra expenditure; that was pretty normal). I felt well in ways I had forgotten, like a weight and itch had been removed from me. My body filled out some, and I looked visibly healthier. All in all, I think that I had been pushing so hard that my healing factor, high even among other Uzumakis, was being slowly ground away by my previous habits.

As I turned six, and over the following half-year or so, I made a point of sampling the culture. I ate out at restaurants for lunch. I visited the theater, once, and decided never again. It wasn't that I dislike the theatre. I liked some modern plays, back on Earth, adored Gilbert and Sullivan, and had a great time watching Greek and Roman plays, reading some in the original. The performances available in Uzushiogakure, however, varied between incomprehensible formalized Japanese-esque forms, and absolutely puerile slapstick without much in between.

And the music… just urgh. The music sounded like strangled cats to me.

Some of the art, however, was quite nice. The most interesting thing I saw was a head-to-head art competition where each round, the artist had only one hour to make their piece of art given a prompt. They used jutsu and seals of all varieties. The judges would then go around, taking into account the cheering of the crowd, and make a cut.

Eventually, it came down to two. One, a fairly young Earth-user favoring sculpture, who was the clear crowd favorite (though part of that was certainly his good looks, and part his supporting cheering-squad of the rest of his patrol group). The other, a fairly old looking non-Uzumaki seals user favoring abstract and subtle elements that still somehow conveyed his message, oftentimes incorporated into the seals themselves.

I favored the sealer, and cheered loudly for him, though in the end the sculptor won. Afterward, I walked up and congratulated the sealer on the speed and elegance of his seals, as well as the subtle artistry, and mentioned that it was a shame that these subtleties were so difficult for those who don't study seals to recognize. He was fairly shocked at my youth and knowledge, but still showed off how he was able to get some of the effects, and I left beaming.

The architecture too I found very interesting. I had always been a fan of Medieval European architecture as a child, especially castles and other fortified structures, but had never had a chance to see Eastern ones. The Uzushio fortifications were an interesting mix of styles. They definitely had an Eastern look to them, especially in how the wall's slope changed a bit gently between the base and the main section of the wall. But, overall, the fortifications were more similar to those of an Industrial-age Europe than anything else, likely because of the need to resist jutsu impact.

The influence of seals could also be seen, as there were some structures that were otherwise impractical or unnecessary. I didn't get to see the restricted areas, but did get to see the general ones thanks to a note from Jii-san to one of the officers. My guide, a relatively fresh corporal in the Patrol, didn't quite seem to know what to think of me and my questions.

I frequently put on laser shows and fireworks shows for fun on Sundays. Eventually it became something of a neighborhood thing; Kushina would come over, of course, and Haruto-sensei would bring his wife and sometimes his kid too. There would be barbeque, often (and unfortunately) live music, and whatever sealers were there would put on a bit of a show. It was a pretty idyllic time.

Of course, I kept up with my training too. My skills continued to improve, my body continued to grow, and my chakra continued to develop. I mostly focused on my sealing, especially as I started many collaborative projects with Hikaru jii-san. First, I showed him my body-mounted DEWS-1, which he found highly interesting. We adapted it to have several more firing modes, and Hikaru passed the design over to the Infantry Weapons, Defense Emplacements and Naval Weapons research groups.

I read a fair number of other Uzumaki researcher's journals; the historical ones were particularly interesting to me, and I always found it useful to learn from the ways that they thought. A lot of the time, progress is cyclical in the kinds of thinking that it needs; by looking at how scientists thought in the past, you can make interesting observations in the present and future. This idea also worked with seals.

In fact, one section, an account of another experimenter's research, gave me a solution to high-velocity small to medium caliber weapons. The account spoke of a "device like a sling made of an iron disk which throws metal pellets at great velocity"; after a moment to puzzle it out, I thought about a centrifuge gun.

Basically, the design that I came up with used a centrifuge to accelerate the payload. In this case, 12.7mm or 40mm rounds. The 12.7 would be only stamped with a no-air-resistance seal and potentially an elemental chakra charge; the 40 would have the no-air-resistance, but also a seal for either elementally-charged High Explosive or Canister. The rounds were loaded into a centrifuge. A seal near the center of the centrifuge could give it very high tangential velocity compared to the surroundings; this meant that at the edge of the centrifuge, it will be traveling much faster.

For example, if the centrifuge was traveling at a tangential velocity of 150 m/s (fairly efficient to do with a seal) at a distance of 1" from the center, then at 6" it would be traveling 6x150= 900 m/s.

The centrifuge then released the rounds into a pulse-dimensional seal, which could activate, seal whatever is fired into it (so long as it hits within the sealing array) and when released, fire it back out at the same velocity. Before entering the pulse-dimensional seal, the rounds passed through a straightening array that made sure the orientation of the holding-seal and the firing path was precise. The weapon was effective in direct-fire up to two kilometers, and with an absolute maximum range of just over eighty kilometers, so long as the air-resistance seal stayed active. The holding, or "magazine" seal fired past a set of seals that straighten the path, so that it was effectively in a fairly perfect barrel which allowed improved accuracy for long distance artillery applications.

At first I thought that my (re-) invention would be perfect for defensive emplacements. Grids of these could provide some fairly serious direct and indirect fire support all around the island, after we worked out the communications network to control it. Instead though, the Naval Weapons group basically took over. They wanted to arm our ships with the weapons. They worked with the Surveyor's Research Group a fair bit on extending the capacity to target objects at larger distances, especially after I showed them a version of the Orbital Weapon that was more a "slow, guided shell with spotting capabilities".

The Surveyor's liked my semi-disposable spotter-missile, and loaded it up with a bunch of mapping seals I'd never seen before, tying the feeds in to the targeting seals. Hikaru jii-san was in charge of the mechanisms to steady and control the total system, so that the rocking of the ship wouldn't affect it too much. The Weapons Group adapted the long-range ballista targeting mechanisms, and tied the whole system together before passing it off to the Industrial Quantities specialist on the team who figured out how to make the seals that automatically churn these systems out.

I barely had to lift a finger. Seriously, I got to peek over basically everybody's shoulder as "Hikaru's sweet genius grandson/apprentice, who came up with the concept," and had my name listed as the first inventor for the system when we filed the design (in the "classified seals" seal, so no official credit, unfortunately), but I didn't have to come up with any of the work beyond the basic concept. I learned a ton too; it was so awesome not to be working on a secret project in my spare time.

I even got the Surveyor's group and the Weapons Group master who specialized in communications seals to add the functionality to my HUD-projector seal so that authorized users could link-in to the surveillance feeds and direct the fire remotely. Unfortunately, the security seals they added to the whole thing were level seven seals, so I couldn't modify anything myself until I learned those. In fact, I wasn't even allowed to watch them put them on at the time, having to wear a blindfold when my own HUD seal was re-applied.

Even still, that was definitely the way to invent. Having a horde of even-more competent individuals to take my ideas and turn them into reality was far better than working myself to death on secret projects.

It turned out that for Uzushiogakure, naval combat seals were really the most important combat multiplier. Uzushiogakure itself is a fairly small island, and only accessible to Uzushio ships and citizens. There was this whole process to immigrating, even from the rest of Whirlpool, I guess to keep out the ninja riffraff. The closest neighbor with a navy that wasn't a joke was the Land of Fire, but their navy was mostly run by the Daimyo rather than by Konohagakure which was fairly land-locked, both by location and by inclination. Whirlpool had excellent relations with the Fire Daimyo. In fact, Whirlpool's Daimyo (the village leader and clan-head acting as Head-of-State) maintained a permanent embassy at the Fire Daimyo's court; this was the only embassy with an attached Expert Sealer, who acted as the court Seals-Master and was the probably the best sealer you'll find outside of Uzushio other than maybe Mito-sama.

The biggest threat to Uzushiogakure and Whirlpool, as I mentioned previously, was Kirigakure. Whirlpool, apart from its fair sized navy crewed by Uzushiogakure chakra users and equipped with the latest seal-devices, also had very difficult to traverse currents. The navigation markers, controlled by seals, meant that only authorized ships could find their way to Uzushiogakure, part of why the village was chosen to be a strong-point in the first place.

Kirigakure was the only ninja Village with a sufficient number of skilled and powerful water-jutsu users and capable navigators and sailors to overcome those natural barriers; they also had a special underwater-operations group that could pose a threat to Uzushiogakure ships. But even Kirigakure's ninja couldn't swim the five hundred or so miles between Kirigakure and Uzushiogakure, so naval strength was a major indicator of Uzushio's defense. Because of this anything that could extend the range and hitting power of the Uzushiogakure ships got a lot of attention from the Applied Seals Research groups, especially Naval Weapons.

When I brought up the idea of Swordfish Underwater drones, and what functionality I thought they should have, Hikaru jii-san grinned.

"The existence of any such seal-devices would be a secret that you are not allowed to learn yet, Daichi-kun, but I would not spend overmuch time on such underwater autonomous attackers," he said with a wink. I grinned back, and right away gave him my idea for flying drones.

This too he found interesting and worth a joint project. A bit more complicated than the Cyclone Bullet Seal and the Cyclone Cannon Seal (the official designations of the machine-gun and automatic-grenade-launcher equivalents respectively), and something worth taking their time to get really efficient, the development on the Peregrine, Sea-Hawk and Osprey went slower than I might have liked. It turned out that again, the people with the research brawn to get sealers working on something and making progress was the Naval Weapons Group; they were more interested in patrol-craft acting as spotters than on the multi-role strike-craft capability of the Sea-hawks or the remote chakra transmission and heavier weapons of the Osprey.

I had to do more work with the aerial drones, as I had a much better understanding of aerodynamics and functional avionic systems than the other Sealers, even though mine came more from logic, flight simulators, and a few half-remembered conversations with Aero/Astro majors back in my previous life. Because of this, while I had developed intuition of fifth level seals, I had made very little progress on sixth level intuition more than six months after.

The drones themselves were wracked with issues. We tried a basic plane shape first, but the number and fiddly-ness of the seals to control everything, especially the flaps, became an issue. After a few months of failed designs, we eventually settled on something of a cross shape with acceleration seal "thrusters" at the points of the cross. By firing the bottom thruster harder, the craft would point up. Similarly, by firing the top thruster harder, the craft would point down. Turning was similar.

The first tests went well; the craft was relatively easy to control in good weather, though a bit slow to turn and totally incapable of the kinds of dare-devil maneuvers I wanted, especially in the lighter craft. Unfortunately, the damned thing didn't really have any way of re-stabilizing itself after a serious upset like a gust of wind, after which the bottom thruster was often not actually positioned at the bottom anymore. Hikaru jii-san actually figured out the fix to that, using a highly efficient if somewhat conceptually strange set of gravity-effecting seals to re-orient the craft when triggered.

The end result was effective, if somewhat less than I had hoped. The maximum efficient speed was about 210 m/s, or about 470 mph. General cruise speed was about 170 m/s or 380 mph. The drone could hover, and was relatively small and light so the chakra requirements weren't obscene. It had an effective loiter height of about 35,000 feet with a ceiling of just over 40,000 feet and a maximum range of about 1,500 miles.

For weapons, the drone had a variable-angle laser weapon, paired forward firing Cyclone Bullet Seals (though without the additional long-range guidance system used on ships), a nose mounted Cyclone Cannon Seal, and a seal with several fire-and-forget secret underwater hunter drones that I was totally unaware of (in theory).

The drone had a reverse summon seal on it so that it could be retrieved when near empty on chakra (a refinement I did not think of), and enough chakra to stay up in oversight for up to six hours in decent weather, three in unfavorable weather (bad weather drained the stabilization seals something fierce), and those times could be doubled with extended chakra batteries or clever usage of thermals.

Apart from weapons, the Remote Surveillance Group put in some of their most advanced sensors. Some were normally kept off, because they drained chakra ridiculously quickly, but even the "basic" sensors were advanced enough to provide good resolution from the ceiling height. The most advanced, which drained the chakra the fastest, had just been produced in time to be included in the design, and could only be triggered in a burst, could even detect most underwater enemies. Using advanced sensors pretty much required extended batteries or a very short flight time though.

Overall, it was a system that was comparable to a WWII aircraft, if somewhat less maneuverable and with better sensor capabilities. Most favorably, the range was sufficient to reach Kirigakure's harbor and loiter long enough and high enough for effective surveillance.

I decided that the Peregrine would have to be faster and more maneuverable than this though, and so we named the first drone the Pelican Weapon System.

There were about six months of "tests" that followed before the Pelican was completed, and the automatic-manufacturing seals started on. These "tests" were more "everyone on the weapons group discovering the joys of flight simulators" using test munitions. We started off with basic flight (aka how not to crash), and after some failures added a load more instrumentation to report flight conditions back to the user. We then moved onto spotting, and what objects look like from the sky, aka, flying over Uzushiogakure. Then we finally moved onto simulated attack runs (fireworks for adults at work).

In a very sneaky move I convinced people that dog-fighting might be fun; as a result, I found out that the maneuverability and speed kits for the Peregrine and Sea-hawk went up about six months on the priority list. They still weren't an immediate project, but I did notice that certain Seal-masters who had claimed their own "birds" had begun to make modifications to the standard sealing arrays that were not on the list of improvements in a bid to one-up each other. Personally, I was working on a fire-and-forget missile system with Hikaru jii-san that would lock onto a designated chakra-signal, in this case the active seals, and launch a homing, high velocity shell with a powerful explosive payload; apparently one of other budding Aces was a somewhat rival of his, and we "absolutely had to win the first Pelican Combat Tournament for the family's honor".

Eventually though all good things came to an end, and we couldn't justify playing with them anymore.

The project-completion party was pretty awesome; I ended up getting taken aside by this Weapons Group weapon-designer who had had more than few shots of sake.

"When you are older, and your Grandfather is not keeping you to himself, you must come work with us," he said. "We will make a beautiful fire." Then the pyromaniac pressed a shot of what I thought was sake into my hands and had me drink. It turned out much stronger, and I ended up coughing a fair bit, much to his amusement. Hell, I don't even know what that drink was; I suspected it may have been enhanced with chakra, since the basic campfire jutsu burned less.

I lucked out somewhat though. As one of the seal-system creators, who had been with the project literally from the beginning, and not being too busy with other projects (and really as a seventh birthday gift to me from Hikaru jii-san), I ended up assigned to the Pelican Application Team with one of the other seal-inventors. The Application Team was basically a group of officers, about half of them experienced with or currently in Naval patrol, as well as some general strategists, regular Patrol, a couple high ranked Retinue guard and even a senior combat-sealer. All of them were thinking of how the Pelican should be used, and how that use should be taught in the Academies and Training Courses. For me, it meant another four months playing with prototype remote-control weapons, and kicking the asses of many fairly elite and senior officers using them. It was awesome.

One of the things I pushed for, and got, was that there would be optional Pelican classes in the Academies for the pre-genin-equivalent students as Pelicans became available. Unlike many other villages, Uzushiogakure believed in additional training classes even after graduating as a basic recruit into the Clan or Village guard, or into a Retinue unit, including obligatory classes when becoming an officer or reaching higher command rank. Part of this was the nature of Uzushio's missions, many of which required a fair competency in Naval affairs, and thus more education than the normal ninja who might learn on the job.

There would be special Aerial Systems Training for selected service-members first, so that the Pelicans could get deployed as soon as possible, but eventually I wanted an aerial device with semi-customizable weapons selection to be available to anyone with the security clearance (not actually that high, since the things were remote-detonate-able and security sealed to hell) who was willing to fill enough chakra batteries for the manufacturing seals to produce one (and the ammunition). That way, Uzushio would be able to field hundreds of flying devices similar in potential damage output to a fairly fresh Jonin, but with more range, all commanded by people who would otherwise be kunai-fodder.

The first Pelican pilots were just out of training in time for their early surveillance flights to locate a (presumed Kirigakure) infiltration team. This would prove to have been a major blessing. A guards reaction team was sent to apprehend them, and succeeded. This would prove to have been a major mistake.


	2. c 12-22

Chapter 12: Epidemic pt. 1

I wish to God that they had killed the infiltrators on the spot, burned the remains, and banished what was left to Void. But the patrol, following standard procedure, engaged and when possible captured. I wasn't there, but was involved in the rather lengthy aftermath; rather than lay things out in the confused manner in which I learned them, I will relate my notes on the situation. This is what occurred.

Day Zero: A cell of four infiltrators were detected barely one week after the Pelican program went active. According to the report, the Ready-Team, a fast reaction group, had a pair of Pelican's on regional surveillance. The active chakra sensor detected a failure in one of the nodes of the Uzushio coastal waters sensor net. A full four action teams, 16 village guards in total, went to investigate and found the infiltrators. The infiltrators fought, wounding two of the guards, but were fairly easily overwhelmed.

Although they at first appeared resigned, when the guards came to apply chakra-sealing seals, the intruders activated a suicide jutsu. Three of the guards who were attempting to apply the seals were covered in blood and viscera.

Day One: I was congratulated by Hikaru jii-san; the use of the Pelicans was decided to be instrumental in preventing the intrusion. He remarked that I was likely to receive a reward from Kazuo-sama, likely a ceremonial weapon as a sign of honor, when all was said and done. First, though, the three guards, including the Group-Leader, would have to leave hospital. I asked jii-san to inquire as to what was wrong with them, and relay my wishes for a speedy recovery and congratulations on their success.

Day Two: Hikaru jii-san told me that the guards seemed to have contracted some sort of illness; all three, including the leader whose Uzumaki bloodline would normally prevent it, were running high fevers. Healing jutsu were less effective than expected, and poison was suspected.

I still remember that moment. A moment of thought, and I realized what had happened; the infiltrators had not failed their mission, or at least not completely.

Back on Earth, one of the biggest fears within the intelligence and military circles had been the idea of bio-warfare suicide-bombers. Basically, instead of walking up with a bomb on them, these people would walk up as incubators of engineered plagues; get on an airplane, and watch the pandemic spread. The carriers may die, but the disease would spread everywhere. An even greater fear was the idea that travelers could be mugged and injected, becoming a stealth-carrier.

This, I suspected, was a similar scenario. The operatives had likely wanted to spread this without dying, but, in failure, had used the suicide option. I even vaguely remembered that Kirigakure had done something similar to their bloodline users; I wasn't sure if that was canon, or fanon, or would have happened in our world regardless. I still had to tell Hikaru jii-san, especially if the illness was strong enough to overcome a Jonin-level Uzumaki with a full healing factor.

Hikaru thought it unlikely, but sufficiently possible that he demanded an immediate meeting with the head of the Medical Department and Kazuo-sama. Apparently, one of the clans that eventually formed Kirigakure was known for using targeted illnesses as poisons rather than more conventional concoctions; they had been rumored to be the founders of a Black Ops unit, referred to as the "Plaguebearers" by Konoha's intelligence briefings.

Quarantine was declared for both patients and any who had treated them. Bubble technique or seals which created a space of clean air were ordered for any coming into contact with them. Full measures were being taken, and preparations made for a full village-wide quarantine if needed.

Day Four: Several doctors and nurses, including those who had been taking full precautions, were sick. A few cases were seen in other citizens. The village went into full quarantine. Troops were sent into defensive positions; those that passed quarantine and were not needed within the village would deploy on ships to maintain health. Other cleared troops would deliver food and water rations in seals for all citizens, who were ordered to remain in their houses otherwise. The disease became the primary research focus for the village, and certain prisoners were authorized as test subjects.

All non-essential communication was ordered to occur through video-seals. A call was put out to Konoha to summon aid as per treaty, specifically the assistance of Tsunade who was already renowned as a medic-nin. She would arrive, at the soonest, a week later.

The panic was awful. The disease was capable of effecting Uzumakis, who were typically resistant if not immune to illness. Many had never been ill in their lives; whether because of this, or because of some trait of the disease, those with the strongest healing factors were impacted the worst. I was wracking my mind for more clues, but couldn't remember anything.

Day Five: Hikaru jii-san and I were assigned to a team focusing on decontamination measures. By the end of the day, we had a set of seals that use UV, soap, water, and even a light acid wash for decontamination. The seals were approved and produced. We were re-assigned to a long-range surveillance group responsible for watching Kirigakure for any signs of a possible invasion.

Day Seven: Containment measures, even those using decontamination washes, continued to fail. Medical stasis seals were being produced in record quantities, and dozens of victims were already sealed within. Some of the seals, particularly those containing the sickest, were draining faster than expected. Two and a half months was given as the amount of time that the patients could be safely sealed; they were expected to die within a week of being unsealed.

The full progress of the disease had been documented and disseminated. First, came an incubation phase lasting about a day, then a phase similar to a bad flu. The fever would continue to get worse, and the subject more ill, as their chakra drained. If the fever didn't kill the patient (which happened fifteen to twenty percent of the time), then there was a forty to sixty percent chance of the patient dying when their chakra reached a nadir. Those that recovered were expected to be basically useless for at least a month, and appeared to have some sort of chakra damage.

Based on the description of the disease, I had a theory that it was more chakra based and possibly somewhat metaphysical or spiritual in nature, with a focus on consuming chakra. With Hikaru jii-san's help we got a temporary leave, and with a few of the Spacial Sealing Group we modified some seals, including my vacuum-protection seal. We then launched a probe into space which would be in Geo-synchronous orbit. The probe contained a seal that opened a semi-stable gate at a remote distance, in this case to the outside of the probe's void-shielding. The other side of the gate would be used to create a vacuum-shield to hopefully protect the medics, since the vacuum should be impenetrable to any chakra-based mechanism.

While the new containment system proved effective, it was bloody expensive in terms of chakra and effort. Each shield consumed the equivalent of 12 Chunin-equivalent chakra-sources, and required some fairly fiddly seals hand-written by at least a sealing expert. It did at least provide the necessary protection for medics to experiment or treat victims.

Day Nine: With the disease contained, and the clock ticking down for those already infected, stock was taken and a Council meeting called. Hikaru, as one of half-dozen High Masters of the Sealing Department, and the theoretical lead on the current containment system, was going. He brought me along as his aide and attendant.

As we are now approaching discussing the political sphere, I think it worth a brief diversion into the basics of Uzushio politics, at least so far as I am familiar with them.

First off, there were the village politics as a whole. There were two main "parties" or philosophies that tended to crop up. The first were the "Progressives". The Progressives believed in "progress for Uzushio" which typically meant developing more seals and a more isolationist foreign policy. They were ascendant at the time of the epidemic.

The second party were the "Interventionists". The Interventionists believed in bringing Uzushio enlightenment to the poor barbarians of the rest of the world. Honestly, both parties were somewhat patronizing and superior, at least in how they looked at outsiders (though, to be fair, Uzushio was decades more advanced than other nations, none of whom could produce things like air-conditioning). The approach was the main difference. At the time, the Interventionists were definitely in the minority. A large part of that was historical.

About forty years previous, in other words well within a standard Uzumaki lifetime, there had been a bit of an odd situation. See, the Naruto-verse was mostly feudal, and any student of feudal history knows what kind of a mess that can result in, particularly with regards to feudal inheritance and obligations after sufficient intermarriage. What happened for the Uzumaki, Uzushio and Whirlpool was an excellent example.

The problem was that different branches owed each other fealty in a circular fashion. A noble but fairly minor clan that owed fealty to the Uzumaki had, a couple generations previous, married into the Whirlpool Daimyo's family. His niece, to be precise, who was never expected to succeed. One illness and a boating accident later, and suddenly this minor clan contained the Daimyo. But, they owed the Uzumaki fealty, and the Uzumaki had military dominance.

The situation could have gotten a bit bloody, but the relations were previously cordial, and the leaders at the time astoundingly rational. There was already a marriage in place with the heirs, and an Uzumaki would be the eventual Daimyo. The problem is, it would be a fairly distant (and unimpressive) branch Uzumaki with no political or marital aspirations. The bigger problem, this Uzumaki's sister (who thus might end up inheriting) was Mito Uzumaki.

Mito Uzumaki, who would become Mito Senju-sama, was extremely politically divisive. She was a staunch member of the Interventionist party, and a fairly accomplished if not particularly gifted sealer, which was actually the biggest issue.

Within the Uzumaki clan, the clan head candidates were chosen from a dozen potential families by voting from qualified Uzumaki. It wasn't a "one-person, one-vote" system either. Votes were partially based on accomplishments, and sealing weighted heavily.

After the candidates (never fewer than three or more than five) were presented, the entire village, including the Uzumaki, would have a similar vote. The sealers were influential enough in the initial process that every time bar one, the candidates were at least level four sealers. That one time, the candidate was a young, but extremely accomplished for his age, and had achieved a level three sealing intuition. He lost that election, but survived long enough to be the next village leader.

So, the sealers had a lot of influence. And that brings us to factions within the Sealing Department. There were three main factions, mostly to do with beliefs towards higher-level seals dealing with Celestials, Demons, Gods, Powers and Concepts.

The first faction, which I belonged to, was the "Isolationists", called the "Ostriches" by our opponents (because we didn't want to see things that scared us). We believed that the world should be as isolated as possible from these beings, and that anything that weakened the walls of reality, or summoned them (which was pretty much synonymous), was a horrible fucking idea. I would eventually learn things in the future, as I gained rank as a sealer and got access to more secret information, that would support these conclusions.

The second faction were the "Contractors", or as we called them, the Demonologists. I think you may be able to guess what they believed in; they were a bunch of power-hungry fools who thought they could interfere with things we were not meant to without consequence. There were a number of hideously ugly actions that they took, often for "the sake of knowledge" or "the greater good", or some other sop to their power-seeking morality. I'm talking about human sacrifice, black-sabbath type shit.

And that was before demonic corruption set in and started further warping their minds. Things could go very, very wrong. But, on the other hand, the power was a lure, and every now and then the philosophy would rise up in the Department. To give them their due, there were accounts of some High Masters and one Grandmaster who had in extremis and temporarily, successfully bound greater powers. But the aforementioned masters had level seven intuition (level eight in the case of the grandmaster), and significantly more knowledge than the Experts who were the typical demonologist dabblers.

The third faction were actually the Clerics. They ware a cult (by which I mean small order of religious adherents) of mostly Uzumaki sealing priests. They agreed with the Isolationists, for the most part, and pretty much quietly did their own thing.

So, want to guess which group Mito belonged to, considering she went on to seal the 9 Biju?

That's right, she was a Demonologist. In fact, she was the last of the high-ranking Demonologists, following an accident. She had been part of a failed summoning and binding; the Master of the group, and three other experts, ended up buying her just enough time (as their minds likely melted) to escape from the higher-seal testing room and hit the emergency vent seal. The room, and whatever was trying to come through, ended up in the Void, and Uzushio escaped a major incursion by the skin of its teeth.

Mito survived censure, barely, but was discredited and put under watch, supposedly for possible demonic taint, but more to make sure she didn't do anything else that was that fucking stupid. Interviews with her afterward showed that she had, apparently, learned absolutely nothing as to how bad such experiments were. Honestly, she was lucky not to be killed or sealed herself. After all, the fucking room that they did the summoning in was still sealed and forbidden territory decades later.

The village was thus, those 40 years ago, in an extremely tight spot. The possible successor to the Daimyo's seat was Mito, who's appointment would literally cause civil war. She couldn't be set aside completely though, at least against her will, since it would give other nations a causus belli to support her position and install her as a puppet; the dumb bitch was already being courted by several of our larger neighbors, and open to their proposals. So, Mito ended up married off to the Senju in a formal ceremony that cut the ties to her original family; while she could claim to be their child, she was out of the line of inheritance. Her brother happily joined a monastery, as he had wanted to do for years. And Kazuo-sama, the next in line as a cousin, inherited first the Clan-leadership, then the Daimyo's seat when the previous holder stepped down. Kazuo permanently linked the Daimyo's seat to the position of Uzumaki's clan leader, and left the clan-leadership as an internal matter.

In all this political maneuvering, Mito and some of the more radical Interventionist supporters managed to start the whole "Great Villages" experiment. At first somewhat promising, their faction was doing fairly well. Then, of course, Mito went and bound the Biju, pissing off the sealers. The other Villages formed, and it was shown that no-one was actually moving towards peace, as had been hoped. Hashirama died in the fighting around then, and Mito, now thoroughly persona non grata, was quietly asked by other Interventionists to stay in Konohagakure lest she distract the situation at home with talk of Demonology.

Then, the First Shinobi World War broke out, and showed that all these "Great Villages" had done was cause escalation. The Interventionists were massively discredited, and under the Progressives' influence, relations with Konoha cooled. There was still an alliance, but it had not been activated in decades, and Uzushio mostly used Konohagakure as a slightly discounted ninja force. No one was exactly sure of what influence Mito would have on how Konoha thought of Uzushio, but Konoha had been warned more than once that she had no influence back in Uzushio.

Moving into this important meeting about the Epidemic of Uzushio, bear this in mind. Most of the characters involved favored isolationist policies, though there were still a few that are pro-Intervention, and pro-Konohagakure.

Day Nine: We had the meeting that would determine our village's future, and my own.

We filed into the room, taking up positions according to some set of rules I was unaware of. My position was standing about four-feet behind Hikaru jii-san. There were maybe two dozen people in the room all told. Kazuo-sama started it off in his role as Village-head.

"Well, I'm glad to see you all, you all look healthy, which is good," he said plainly. There were some nervous chuckles. "No, really, this is good. The quick actions of Village Security and the Medical Department have made this disaster far less damaging than it could have been. I congratulate you."

At this he bowed, fairly deep no matter what position he was operating under. Had I been back on Earth, living in the West, I wouldn't have been as cognizant of how much of an honor this was. Honestly, it was actually a bit much, making people embarrassed at the surfeit of praise.

"Ah, we don't deserve all the praise," the active Chief-of-Medicine replied. His boss was currently in one of the stasis seals. "Hikaru-sensei, after all, gave warning that these actions may be necessary, and developed the seal that currently protects us."

That's right, praise Jii-san! I thought. As a note, Hikaru was being called "sensei" because of his position as a seals-master.

Hikaru jii-san smiled. "You should praise Daichi, actually, I merely relayed his concerns, and the idea for the shield was his as well." There were a number of glances and head-bows to me at this, and I blushed and shuffled under the attention while ducking my head in a return bow. Honestly, the whole thing was very Uzushio, this sharing of praise and honor, but without anything other than verbal acknowledgement.

Kazuo-sama laughed. "I knew I would be watching your progress with interest, Daichi-kun. But, to business. What are the numbers?"

"They're bad, but better than they might have been," the Chief-of-Medicine replied. "We've got a hundred and forty six down with the illness so far. Of those, eight are doctors including the Chief-of-Medicine, and fourteen are nurses. There are eighty four Guardsmen down with the illness, of whom sixteen are genin equivalent and ten are jonin equivalent; the fifty eight others are chunin. Two sealers are ill. The other thirty eight patients are villagers, though some are retired veterans. All are currently in Stasis seals, and have an expected to last two and a half months from the date of their sealing. There have only been a pair of newly discovered cases since two days ago. Both were fairly advanced progressions from individuals in quarantine; they were discovered after they didn't pick up their rations. There have been two casualties, one a villager, the other the Patrol Lieutenant who first made contact with the enemy."

"His family will want for nothing, and the villager's will receive standard compensation," Kazuo-sama pronounced. "See to it." One of his aides nodded, making a note, and Kazuo-sama continued. "And what progress towards a cure?"

The Chief-of-Medicine grimaced. "Slow. We've identified the disease vector; it's a chakra active illness, but it's extremely exotic, and doesn't act like anything we've seen before. We're having no luck in figuring out how to clean it from someone's blood, and it hasn't responded to any of our common treatments. Chakra exhaustion close to death appears to be a possible solution, using chakra-free life support and first aid, but even with full facilities we'll lose at least 5% of the patients to death, and another 10% will have permanent issues with their chakra system. We've requested Tsunade Senju come and provide assistance."

Kazuo-sama rubbed his jaw, thinking about the implications. "That's understandable, if not what I was wanting to hear. I want all spare sealers to be working on possible solutions. When will the Senju arrive?"

The Minister of Foreign Affairs leaned forward to address the question. "Our messenger has arrived at Konoha, but the negotiations are complicated. Mito-sama seems to be looking for a successor to carry the Kyubi. Konoha has recalled Tsunade as a gesture of good faith, but is pushing for a potential host to be given in trade."

There were grimaces and grumblings at this, and the sealing detachment looked positively murderous.

"Let's revisit that at the end of the meeting," Kazuo-sama said, refocusing the conversation. "What's the military situation?"

I saw a man in the uniform of a high-officer shift forward; I vaguely recognized him as the Minister of the Military from the Pelican's launch party. "Nothing to report. We've had constant Pelican patrols in local waters, and over Kirigakure. No anomalous movement. We are now tracking sixty five percent of the Kirigakure fleet, and show no gatherings or unexpected behavior."

Kazuo-sama nodded. "The investigation?" he asked.

The Military Minister motioned at the Commander of Village Security, one of the subordinates of the Commander of the Village Guard.

"Not much to report," the commander replied. "The remains of the infiltrators were disposed of, save for samples, when they were found to be infected. The previous analysis didn't show any signs of where they were from. The gear was in the Kirigakure style, but the method used to get past the sensor-net is much more sophisticated than I would expect from them. The leading theory is that they used a dissolving seal to temporarily over-ride the sensor. There is no suspicion of any traitors at this time."

"Did Intelligence turn anything up? Could Kirigakure have managed this?" Kazuo-sama questioned.

"Unlikely," the Intelligence Commander answered. "Is it possible? Anything's possible. But Kirigakure is almost totally unfamiliar with Uzumaki sealing techniques. And there are no seal-users of sufficient skill outside of the village to teach that kind of talent, other than Mito-sama."

"Sealing Department, do you agree?" Kazuo-sama requested verification. "And what's being done to prevent this from happening in the future?"

"We agree," the Sealing Chief said, nodding. "That sensor net is solid, Expert-level work. It's unlikely that Kirigakure, who are among the least talented sealers, would have managed to get past it in such a subtle fashion. The network is being expanded with overlapping territories, and alarms and more aggressive fail-safes are being added. If a seal is deactivated in the future, we'll know about it, and those doing it will suffer if they're not very careful."

"Good," Kazuo-sama said with a sharp smile. "So, what do we do? Who do we think did this, how do we prove it, and what can we do to them?"

At this, the careful equilibrium shattered. People started talking, then arguing, then shouting at each other; I was not using my memory reinforcement techniques, and so do not remember it well enough to recount. It was, frankly, a bit embarrassing. To make that point clear, after Kazuo-sama released a burst of killing-intent that quietened the room, he turned to me.

"Daichi-kun. You've been surprisingly effective in this situation. What is your analysis."

I was totally taken aback. I was seven! I sure as hell shouldn't be talking in this setting. I quickly realized why Kazuo-sama was doing this; it was a subtle remonstration and commentary on the behavior of his advisors. I cleared my throat, partially to give me a moment to organize my thoughts.

"Ah, Kazuo-sama," I began. "Well, it seems like there are three simple questions, with not so simple answers. First, who are the suspects. In other words, who had the motive, means and opportunity. Second, how do we prove this, or how sure are we? And third, what can we do, or rather what do we do in reply?"

"A good framing of the question, but I asked for you answer," he chided me in a fairly gentle tone. I blushed hard.

"My apologies, Kazuo-sama. First, for the medical situation, we should be testing samples of blood for immunity. We should start with those with the strongest healing factors among the Uzumaki, and see if there is some kind of immunity we can duplicate."

"A worthy idea, yes?" he interrupted while looking at the Chief-of-Medicine, who nodded. "Continue."

I cleared my throat again. "Well. I think it was Konohagakure, or elements within them."

The room burst into another uproar; even Kazuo-sama had risen an eyebrow. The Foreign Minister, who was apparently an Interventionist, looked positively murderous. Once again Kazuo-sama quietened them.

"An unexpected answer. Explain your reasoning. Without interruptions," he said, giving a quick glare at the rest of the room.

This whole thing was way too serious for me. I was comfortable working on seals; honestly, it reminded me of studying in university, and was always interesting. I enjoyed working out and sparring, and learning magic jutsu was freaking awesome. But standing in front of the leadership of my family, my country, and giving unpopular or shocking theories? Not so much.

"Well, first the suspects. Kirigakure is the most obvious. They resent our influence and wealth, and the fact that our ships both refuse to pay protection and are still safer is a serious threat to their economy. Further, their philosophy of the survival of the strongest and the shark-like nature of man are at odds with our own; so long as we exist, we represent an existential threat to their philosophy and encourage potential rebellion. This is the motive. As for means, it is well known, or at least well suspected, that they have that Black-Ops unit, the Plague-bearers. But opportunity is less well established; it seems unlikely they could have infiltrated in such a way. As for confirmation, they don't seem to have realized that our situation even exists, and have certainly taken no action to indicate the invasion we would expect to come on the heels of this illness.

"Compare this to Konohagakure. For motive, they have the general fear of our sealers and might. Especially with Mito-sama as an example, who knows what they think about our sealing-arts? Further, they need a new host for their asinine attempt at causing peace through mutual fear of the Biju; without the Kyubi, they may even be attacked. If Mito already needs a new host to take over her demon, then the damage caused by the chakra must be far too damaging for any other than an Uzumaki. For means, Konohagakure is known to have one of the best intelligence networks, and fairly good researchers; they may have invented the disease themselves, or stolen it from Kirigakure. As to opportunity, they have the best sealing training outside of Uzushio and some select monasteries, and are the best suspects as to how the ninja got through the sensor net. Their motive is weaker than Kirigakure's, but is it strong enough? I think yes.

"If I had to give odds, I'd say sixty percent Konohagakure, thirty percent Kirigakure, and ten percent someone we're not even considering. Note that when I say Konohagakure, I doubt that the Hokage knows; it is likely some conspiracy involving a less principled and more warlike senior adviser with the influence and knowledge necessary to pull off this plot.

"As to how we could test this, things get harder since we have called for Tsunade. Had we not, we could have waited, especially if we came up with our own cure, and seen if Konohagakure made any moves. The same for Kirigakure. Their reactions may have provided us with clues.

"As it stands, I see no easy way to test who is responsible. We could make seals to disperse aerosol samples of the illness over both Konohagakure and Kirigakure and perform this mission around midnight using Pelicans. If Kirigakure has a cure, they are likely to have developed it. If Konoha does, then they are likely to have deployed it. Either way, we can be fairly sure that the guilty will suffer, though so will many innocents. It will, however, make it far less likely for biological warfare to be used in the future if the users fear the spread of the disease."

At my final recommendation of spreading the plague I caused another minor uproar. I could hear one of the military officers half-gasp and half-laugh something that sounded a lot like "the balls on that kid", as well as gasps of horror and shock from the more civilian-minded advisers. The Minister of Foreign Affairs even jumped in.

"Kami above child!" he shouted. "What are you saying? Spread the disease to anyone, let alone our ally?"

This actually pissed me off a bit.

"Someone spread it to us, intending our destruction," I retorted. "If we don't reply, we invite future attacks. It's distasteful, but worth considering seriously."

Kazuo-sama, who had been watching things, re-took control before his minister could get in a shouting match with a seven year old.

"That is a disturbingly believable analysis as things concern Konohagakure," he pronounced. "We will not release this weapon on others. We will however keep samples in the highest security sealing vault, and make it clear that any future attacks will not meet with such restraint. Now the question is, do we deal with Konohagakure, and if so, what are we willing to trade?"

The discussion continued, now much more strained than it had been before. It was no longer a question of who did this, and what we did to them, but the possibility that our strongest ninja allies may have factions seeking our destruction. As the discussion became somewhat circular as to whether to treat with Konoha or not, I payed less attention until something caught my notice, spoken by someone who I neither recognized, nor did I think they had been introduced.

"Who could we give them, if we had to?" the man asked.

"They would need the Adamantine chains, and be at least two years pre-puberty," the Sealing-Chief replied. "Mito's seal cannot function without the chains; she was only an Expert Sealer when she left, and for something as strong as the Kyubi no-one below the 7th level could write an adequate seal. The youth is needed to acclimate to the youkai chakra, which would otherwise cause a very short life for the holder. In fact, without the Mokuton (wood-release) it may be too dangerous to seal into someone without some spare chakra flexibility."

"What about simply sealing it ourselves into a subject of their choosing?" a second anonymous (at least to me) man asked.

This was definitely the wrong thing to say to the sealers. Before they could jump him however, a legal expert, easily the oldest man in the room, spoke.

"That's impossible," he announced. "It's against clan, village and national law to give examples of such high-level seals to foreign nations in case they could reverse engineer it and continue to use it, and derivative seals, in the future. It would take too long to change this law, even if we wanted to."

The first man leaned forwards again. "So, who would we give them, if we had? How many lives would it save."

"We can't be sure," the Chief-of-Medicine answered. "Possibly none, or possibly, preventing the death or permanent combat-ineffectiveness of about half the patients."

"Seventy to eighty lives then, including half a dozen Jonin," the other man summarized. "We can't not deal with them, then. Pretty much whoever we give would be worth it."

"On the contrary, it shows we can be pressured in this way, and weakens us to the future," the Intelligence Commander interjected.

"But, as Kazuo-dono said, we will make it clear that any future attempts will result in serious reprisal," that first man argued. The Intelligence Commander scoffed, but didn't say anything. From this I at least knew that the man was a villager, and not an Uzumaki.

"So, we could seal it into who? Kushina-sama?" the second man asked. The two seemed to be working together; I suspected they were upper level merchants or landowners, political types rather than administrative, combatant, or skilled experts.

I saw Kazuo-sama wince at this. It was difficult to protect his niece without looking selfish, especially if eighty lives hung in the balance.

But, I was hardly going to throw my sole childhood friend to the snake-pit of Konohagakure. She was just a kid, and family, and that went against pretty much everything I believed in. I, at least, might eventually escape; I was far less likely to fall into some Demonologist's trap too. So, I spoke up.

"I am also capable of the chains, and am younger than Kushina-sama. Further, I am a more experienced sealer, and am somewhat more worldly and less likely to fall to Mito-sama's demonology. I will be more suited to keeping Konoha in line as well."

I purposefully put as much sarcasm as possible into Mito's title, and used the term demonology to refer to her. Keeping your daughter selfishly is one thing. Refusing to give her to a Demonologist is something else entirely, and the rank badge on my robes spoke to the fact that I was a senior enough Sealer to make such a judgment.

I could tell from sensing his chakra that Kazuo-sama was grateful.

"Very well," Kazuo-sama agreed solemnly. "I have decided. If Tsunade arrives before we find a solution, then in return for their aid in curing the Chakra-Consumption Epidemic, we shall send whomever is most suited to hosting the Kyubi. So I decree."

At this, we all bowed. He stood and left the room. I had maybe three days for there to be a solution. And I knew jack-shit about biology.

Chapter 13: Epidemic, pt. 2

After the meeting, life continued. The village was still on lock-down, though it had been slightly loosened for military activities, and all efforts were being made to find a cure.

Day Ten: No progress. My blood was taken to be tested for immunity.

Day Eleven: When Tsunade was reported to be boarding a patrol-craft, Kazuo-sama was contacted by seal-communicator. He summoned me. Hikaru jii-san would have come, but I asked him to stay and keep working on a potential solution. Jii-san nodded grimly at me, and gave me a hug.

When I arrived at the fortress, I was immediately ushered into a private audience with Kazuo-sama. He motioned that I should sit, and served me some tea. We sipped in silence for a moment before he spoke.

"It was a brave thing that you did. Thank you."

"No thanks are necessary, Kazuo-sama. It was my selfish wish not to allow Kushina to enter such a den of scum and villainy."

He chuckled. "You have always been surprisingly mature."

"I must have an old soul," I smiled.

"Yes, that must be it."

We sipped more tea.

He sighed lightly. "As for the matter at hand. Tsunade is hours away. Unless we find a last minute solution, it doesn't look good."

"What can one do?" I meant it as a semi-musing philosophical thought. Kazuo-kaka however grinned and answered.

"Well, as Daimyo of Whirlpool, I can refuse to let you leave my service. Konoha's agreement is with Kazuo-dono; he overstepped himself. As an inactive Militia reservist, you are officially sworn to Whirlpool's service, not Uzushio's."

"Kazuo-kaka, your agreement though? Would this be possible?"

"Possible, legally, yes. Not so in reality. Though I can at least force a compromise. You will not be leaving my service entirely. Instead, you will be given an official diplomatic position within Whirlpool's government active immediately on the basis of your services and sealing achievements. When you go, you will be sent formally as a diplomatic emissary from Whirlpool's Embassy to the Daimyo's court, then appointed by the ambassador as a representative in Konohagakure.

"This is allowed as part of our treaty with the Fire Daimyo, and will give you diplomatic protection, both formally under Whirlpool's aegis, as well as formally from the aegis of the Fire Daimyo's court. If Konoha oversteps itself, it will face censure both from us and their own Daimyo; you may even end up coming home. They will doubtless be very careful.

"In your position as an Advanced Instructor of Whirlpool fist, and thus a recruit-sergeant of the Militia, you will be activated at the youngest possible age, 8 years old, and indefinitely seconded to Konohagakure's military as part of a largely imaginary exchange program. Thus, you will serve within Konohagakure, and host Mito's mistake, but will be as protected as I can make you. I apologize for not being able to do more."

When he finished the explanation he bowed to me, and did not raise his head until I replied.

"Ah, Kazuo-sama, please, there is no reason to apologize, you have merely done your duty as clan-head, as village-chief, and as Lord of Whirlpool. You have done more than is necessary for this poor vassal." I bowed as well. Let it never be said that my parents didn't manage to teach me formal manners. Kazuo-sama laughed at this.

"Please, do not bow. Already you show your talent as a diplomat, eh Daichi-san?" I grinned, both at the comment, and at the address; by calling me Daichi-san he was effectively saying that my actions meant he respected me as an adult.

"Now, come." he ordered. "You're position, second assistant to the Whirlpool Ambassador to the Fire Nation, Chief of the Permanent Konohagakure Mission, is Titled. There is formal clothing in the attached room, and your parents are waiting for the ceremony where I will grant you your sword." I was shocked speechless. Kazuo-sama was seriously grateful that I had saved Kushina, clearly, and was honoring me with the lowest of noble positions. It would make me even more inviolate in Konohagakure, and was a huge honor.

I thanked Kazuo-sama profusely, but he just motioned me towards the connecting room. There was an attendant to help me into the formal clothing, apply some face-paint, and explain the ceremony that I was about to participate in. Then, newly dressed in my diplomat's regalia, I was ushered into another room where my parents, grandparents, a few other family members, Haruto-sensei and his wife, and Kushina were all waiting. Tou-san's parents, part of the noble rather than sealing or ninja Uzumaki branches, were looking particularly pleased. Hikaru jii-san looked proud and amused; I knew he'd give me a bit of ribbing about being a doll later on, given my clothing and make up. I was a bit overcome by the situation, and went through the ceremony in a daze.

When Kazuo-sama handed me my new swords, a pair of katana and wakizashi, I couldn't contain my smile. It was either smile or cry, honestly; this honor was dearly purchased, and seeing all those whom I'd be missing while in Konoha really drove the point in.

I was told that the swords were a pair that had been made as a collaboration between a sealing expert and a swordsmith from the Land of Iron about a century ago for an Uzumaki who had gained great renown at sea. They were called the Red Night's Sky (the Katana) and Morning's Storm (the Wakizashi). Apart from being chakra conductive, they had seals to enchance Wind-element and Water-element respectively, and other seals to bond with the owner until death or dismissal, and could be further bound as a summon to using body-seals. Apart from the honor, the swords were highly functional, and a beautiful work of art.

After the ceremony was over, I received congratulations and hugs from my family. Kushina came up last, and looked at me for a moment before she burst into tears, saying it was all her fault, and then hugging me and crying into my chest. I hugged her back, told her that it wasn't her fault but Konohagakure's, and that it wasn't like I was leaving right away, and we'd be able to keep in contact with video seals too. She sniffed, and pulled back, allowing me to see the water-stains on my new silk outfit. When she saw where I was looking, she blushed, apologized, and then huffed before declaring we'd be blaming the Leaf for that too. I just laughed at the little Tsundere.

Some of those stains never actually came out, though the servant who had dressed me did manage to fix most of the damage. I decided to let it remind me of the conditions of my rise in station and upcoming voyage to Konohagakure.

Some hours later, Tsunade arrived

Day Twelve: A sample of blood immune to the disease was finally found. Furthermore, it proved capable of curing the disease when injected in relatively small quantities. It was quickly placed in one of the greatest sealing creations of the Sealing Department; a duplication array made by a Grandmaster, capable of taking a sample and then performing the Creation of All Things to make a perfect duplicate down to the chakra and metaphysical identity of the object being copied.

Soon enough, enough blood was produced to heal all the diseased. Spare samples of the blood were stored against future need.

Want to know what was really ironic? The blood was mine. And Tsunade, despite her presence, didn't have time to lift a finger.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

But I knew I was going to Konohagakure in four months time either way.

Chapter 14: Accouterments

If I had thought I knew what "busy" and "hard-working" were before, I had been totally wrong. The four months leading to my departure were a whirlwind of activity.

First off, two days after my investiture, or one day after the disease was cured (and Tsunade left in a bit of a snit due to our not sharing how exactly we did so – suck it, Konoha), I was called into a meeting with my grandparents. And not Hikaru jii-san, but rather Tou-san's parents Ojii-sama and Obaa-sama.

As you may have guessed from their names, or rather the honorifics I had to call them by, they were pretty formal. They were part of the Noble Uzumakis, and were among the higher-titles that weren't directly part of the village top leadership. Most of their income, like that of many of the other nobles, was from ships and docking or warehouse space on Wave.

They pretty much lived in "ye olde days" in their small compound, practicing a samurai lifestyle. They trained in the sword and archery, and had a number of servants and an even greater number of retainers (some of whom were from ninja families). Tou-san was the second youngest of six children, and something of a black sheep. He had made his parents rather happy by joining the guard, and performing well, but had scandalized them when he insisted on going through ninja-training. That, after all, was the position for the help.

Tou-san ended up married to Kaa-san, and since Kaa-san had higher rank within the village, his parents were fairly happy for him to marry into her family rather than vice versa as it fulfilled their social expectations. My being invested as a minor noble, and being appointed to an honorable position, especially at such a young age, had them totally tickled pink. I normally saw them on some ceremonial dates, where I would be one among many of their grandchildren. We'd attend a banquet or ceremony, and I'd typically be located in a middling-honorable seating position due to my achievements as a sealer balanced against Tou-san's actions and my own interest in the ninja arts. For them to summon me for ceremonial tea was… unexpected. Well, not even something I'd considered, really, though in retrospect it made sense.

So I prepared formally, in my new regalia and wearing my swords as was proper, and went to my grandparents for a ceremonial tea. I loved the tea in Uzushio. We had a lot of trade, and all the best tea in the Nations ended up coming through Whirlpool's ports. I hated tea ceremonies though. The damned things could last literally hours. Oh, the tea was quite good, and the whole thing was typically in very nice settings. But even with chakra reinforcement, and flexible as I was, sitting in seiza for hours was a fucking misery. I would sit in misery for what felt like forever, then eventually, finally, be allowed to drink the damned tea which could have been made in a tenth the time, cursing the rules of etiquette in my mind all the while.

We had the tea. I sat right, made the right motions, the right sounds, the right compliments. I was sure this formal tea was only meant to see if they can make me sweat while I waited until Ojii-sama revealed the purpose of my visit. Eventually proprieties had been served, and Ojii-sama said the first meaningful thing of the whole visit.

"Your father has raised an excellent son. You are truly a credit to your blood." God, but I wanted to say something sarcastic. But I just nodded stoically. He seemed approving.

"You now need the proper accouterments that go with your station." I was thinking that I might be getting a gift of money to help me uphold the expectations of my new station. That would be in keeping, at least, with our general history; I tended to get a carefully calculated gift of money on all the socially expected occasions, but little else. Maybe I'd get some property, I thought, or a stake in some ships to provide an income. If he was being overly samurai, possibly an armor. But what happened next broke every expectation I had, even the most ridiculous.

"Sachiko, come!" he commanded in a slightly raised voice. The screen door on the side of the room slid open, and a teenager in a functional but sharp looking uniform was revealed kneeling behind it.

She was, at a guess, about 14 years old, with dark hair pulled into a ponytail behind her. She seemed fairly fit, with toned muscles and lithe movements that spoke to training rather than merely an active lifestyle. I surmised she was likely a combat-trained retainer.

She bowed from her kneeling position to Ojii-sama, and then shuffled into the room, settling off to the side in a respectful seiza that managed to indicate a degree of submission. Her movements were smooth, showing her familiarity with this sort of formality, but didn't have that "stick in uncomfortable places" stiffness endemic to the samurai retainers, so I guessed she was likely a retainer from a ninja family.

"Sachiko, my grandson has recently been invested as a Junior Baron Courtier of the Fifth Rank and appointed Assistant to the Ambassador to the Fire Daimyo's court." That was actually pretty damned impressive. My title was new enough that even I didn't know it, at least not without looking at the scroll that served as my Patent of Nobility, and here's Ojii-sama rattling it off like nothing. This whole thing clearly meant more to him than I had realized.

While Ojii-sama paused in his usual way after saying something for it to sink in, my mind was spinning into all sorts of strange directions. I was really worried for a moment that he was going to try and have me sleep with her or something crazy like that; the old man was about a hundred, and could easily have forgotten when kids went through puberty. I was mercifully spared the embarrassment of explaining, in this hyper-formal setting, that I wasn't actually capable of sex yet, or deciding to disappear with her and have an awkward conversation until enough time had passed. Honestly, all that might have been easier.

"I wish for you to become my grandson's first retainer, Sachiko." Holy shit.

No, seriously. This was super fucked up. Dear old gramps had just basically given me someone as a cross between my slave and my bodyguard and minion-in-chief (pro tempore). Of course, calling her a slave would be a massive insult, to the point she might kill herself, so I would never do that. But in effect, it's what she was.

She would have been raised literally from birth to serve; Danzo had nothing on a good traditional samurai conditioning regime. I could probably have her do just about anything; as a ninja retainer, she didn't really have honor of her own beyond what I gave her. Basically, she could do anything ordered, no matter how dishonorable it might normally be, because her honor came not from her actions but by fulfilling my commands.

If you want an example of how fucked up people could become under such a regime, well the White Fang, Hatake Kakashi's father in the original canon, was probably once from a retainer family and held those morals, with the Third Hokage as his master. As a full grown man, with a kid, he finally managed to break programming to save people as close to him as younger brothers from certain death; the shame, the moral misery he experienced because of the failure to complete his orders from his surrogate lord, the Hokage, led to his suicide.

This was probably my grandfather's antiquated way of showing approval and apologizing for the distance between us; it was also likely, in retrospect, to be an outreach to Tou-san. By showing me such a conspicuous honor - and being given a retainer valuable enough to have sworn direct oaths of fealty at such a young age was a real honor – it would also show honor to Tou-san. Basically, Ojii-sama was trying to repair the rifts that his honor originally demanded, and doing so in a way commensurate with his honor.

If this had been happening to anyone other than me, I'd have loved it; this is what the damned theatre should have been about, if mocking such an ancient and revered tradition wasn't likely to end in an honor-duel. On that level, this was really nice.

On another level, it's about a hundred times worse than giving a seven-almost-eight year old kid a puppy right before he leaves for summer camp, and expecting the kid to look after the puppy during summer camp.

It was only shock and the combination of British (first life), and then (partially) Samurai upbringings that let me keep my shit and my straight face. And that was important; while I was biologically a kid, I had been appointed a title by the Daimyo, our Clan-leader, and would thus be dishonoring him, my grandfather, and myself if I behaved inappropriately.

But I really felt for this girl. Here she was, just entering her teenage years. She had likely worked herself to the bone to gain scraps of attention and approval. And she had excelled. And then the reward for that excellence? Being given literally as an accoutrement, a trapping, an accessory to my station. Of course, this station would be in a foreign city about 400 miles away as the crow flies. And her poor parents. Her very name, Sachiko, meant happiness (sachi) and child (ko). So I was taking their "child of happiness", possibly their first child, maybe after a trying time to give birth, and I was going to take her to the snake's pit of Konohagakure. She might be their only child; their line might end because of this, Ojii-sama's gift.

I tried the gentle dance of refusal, but knew Ojii-sama would not do this without being sure. I had a greater chance of holding back the tide.

"I am greatly honored, Ojii-sama. But, I would not wish to deprive you of a retainer with such skills as Sachiko," I tried as my opening gambit.

"I insist. I assure you our family has sufficient retainers that one can be spared to your service," the old bastard replied with a faint hint of amusement in his eye. He already knew how this would end, but found my efforts at this dance amusing.

"I meant no insult, no such insinuation, Ojii-sama," I returned quickly.

"Oh, then do you question Sachiko's skills? If you prefer, you may give her a test yourself, or would you prefer another?" Sachiko managed to keep her cool appearance, but that was cruel.

"Not at all Ojii-sama. After all, any that has your personal recommendation must be very highly skilled." I could sense Sachiko's well controlled chakra lighten a bit at that.

"Good. Then it is settled." And it was.

With her previous oath released, and a new one sworn to me in blood, I had my first retainer, Hisakawa Sachiko. And these oaths aren't like the western ones, promising loyalty for fealty, protection for service; no, not at all. She promised her obedience, her skills, her blood to me, taking no other honor but what I gave her. I was suitably somber; this was one of the most important moments of her life. After the ceremony of fealty, I turned to her.

"Sachiko-san."

"Yes, Uzumaki-dono."

"I would have you address me as Daichi-sama, Sachiko." That was about as informal as I could try with her; baby steps, I thought, would be the way to go. She gave a brief bow of her understanding, and I decided to explain my reasoning. The sooner I could get her treating me as human rather than some sort of minor god, the better.

"After all, things will doubtless be confusing otherwise, and you are my first retainer and head of my Retinue Guard and household." This was something of a sop to her; she may no longer be in direct service to my grandfather, a greater lord than I, but at least she was the head of the Retinue and household for a lord. A position as in my Retinue was actually a fairly high honor, even with a lord as young as I, mostly due to my prowess with seals. And there were some thousand or so Uzumaki on the island, all told, so calling me "Uzumaki" anything would get old fast.

"But what I meant to say, Sachiko-san, is that we will be leaving in just over 4 months, after my eighth birthday, so I might take up my post in Konohagakure. Until then, I will be practicing every morning from dawn until three hours after with my father; I expect you to join me so we might become accustomed to fighting together." Though I was facing Sachiko, I could tell that my grandfather, the old warrior, clearly approved of my preparations.

"Very good, Daichi-san. Your talent continues to impress me. Sachiko will, with your approval, have the rest of the day and night to herself, and move into your household tomorrow." Shit. I'd have to warn my parents; Tou-san would definitely understand, but Kaa-san saw all this as antiquated (which it was). She'd totally make fun of me; I'd have to make sure she treated poor Sachiko well. Oh god. Kushina. I just knew she'd be a total brat about the whole thing. I'd just have to make sure Sachiko understood that as my retainer, all she had to care about was my approval. And I could start then.

"Thank you, Ojii-sama for your consideration for my retainer. I am deeply appreciative." I bowed to my grandfather; he nodded back having clearly understood the subtext, and approved.

Some more meaningless pleasantries and a small, partially eaten snack later, and I was on my way out of Ojii-sama's home with Sachiko a step behind and to the left. She had certainly mastered silent movement; if I wasn't able to sense chakra, I would never have known she was there, and even her chakra was reasonably well controlled and concealed.

"Sachiko-san," I began, then gave a small pause to make emphasize what followed. "Thank you for giving me your oath. Know that I will cherish it, and value you. From this day forward, disregard any displeasure but my own, and believe no censure that does not come directly from me in person. Hopefully, in time, you can find it in yourself to be my friend, as well as my vassal. Is this understood?"

"Yes, Daichi-sama." And to this day, I am in awe of her; her composure in being given to a callow youth, and her ability to take the pompous pronouncements of a seven year old seriously. To my credit though, she was somewhat more relaxed.

That night, when I explained the situation to my parents and asked their forbearance towards her, especially from Kaa-san, I got hugged tightly by a woman slightly teary at "how quickly her little boy is becoming a man" while my Tou-san looked on approvingly. It was worth it though; Kaa-san promised to treat Sachiko with all due caution towards her feelings, and even offered to give her some sealing training when she was too exhausted from Tou-san's training.

And Tou-san was doubtless going to train her into the ground; as a heavy combat specialist with both Samurai and Ninja training, he was well suited and motivated to prepare Sachiko for a life of protecting his only son. That said, it was unlikely I'd remain his only son for long; apparently my parents were under pressure to have more children to see if any would be geniuses like me. Someone had even broached the topic of Tou-san taking concubines, though it was generally agreed that Kaa-san was responsible for my inclination to sealing.

It was a bittersweet idea. I was glad for my parents, and happy both that our family would grow and that I was being seen as such a valuable person. But the idea of missing my to-be siblings' childhoods just made me more pissed off with Konohagakure.

Chapter 15: Priests and Preparations

Sachiko was the first development in my last four months in Uzushiogakure. To aid in her development and training, I ensured she received the most recent version of the DEWS laser weapon seal, an enhanced HUD-projector around her eyes, and the best defensive body-sealing scheme I could cadge out of Hikaru jii-san as well as a built-in Cyclone-Cannon Seal and a full selection of Magazine seals. Unfortunately, she did not have time to learn how to use a Pelican as well as all of her other training; it was something I intended her to work on by remote-training using a Pelican stationed out of Uzushiogakure after our arrival in Konoha, though if possible I'd have her using a Sea-Hawk or even Peregrine depending on what designs were published.

The second development was my social and diplomatic training. I was expected to have small classes, mostly as they fit into my schedule, from a special tutor assigned by Kazuo-sama to educate me on diplomatic conventions and polite behavior in every setting. I dined most days with either Kazuo-sama and his family, including Kushina, or with whatever guests he was entertaining on business. During that time, I became close with Kushina and learned more than I had every imagined knowing about the background of running a nation and the social niceties so important to avoid incidents in that semi-feudal world.

The third development, and by far the most draining to my time and energy was my Advanced Seals training. I suffered with semi-constant headaches during those four months due to over-use of my mental reinforcement, all to push myself to the level that I needed to obtain before leaving.

The group that took over my seals training was actually the Priest-faction. I was officially ordained as the lowest-possible rank, an apprentice exorcist to be exact, so that I might be inducted into some of their mysteries and prepared for my tasks.

The high-ranks of the Sealing Department saw a unique opportunity in me. To understand this opportunity, you need to know something of the deep mysteries of chakra. Should you ever end up in the Elemental Nations, DO NOT MENTION THESE. They will get you killed or abducted, and draw the interest of the likes of Madara or Itachi.

The deep secret that needs to be understood is the nature of "demons," in particular the Biju, and how they relate to chakra and the local fabric of reality. I will relate what was related to me.

Before the first days of chakra, far before even the Sage of Six Paths, there was a great society with mighty powers. From what I personally understood, it was a modern, or post-modern but still recognizable civilization similar to those present on Earth. Then, something happened, though what exactly I didn't know. Possibilities included high energy physics experiment, superweapon, divine intervention, extra-dimensional interference, alien act, or just an (un)natural disaster.

The result though was chakra.

When chakra first came into the world, it was wild, uncontrolled. For while the Nations had adapted to chakra over time, chakra was not originally native to this world. Instead, it came from realms of greater chakra-density, and poured into our world. Unbound Chakra, lacking even the structure of standard, dangerous nature chakra as used by Sages, was power and change. New, unstable bloodlines would form in those completely unused to chakra.

Imagine, a town's marketplace, crowded, full of life. A man begins to bleed from his skin and claw and writhe. His bones begin to break through, and as the crowd flees, too slow, a forest of bones erupt around the man, killing him and any within a few hundred meters.

For far too long, that was peoples' reality. Humanity shrank, often surviving in small pockets where the local chakra was, for whatever reason, particularly weak or benign. And chakra did not make it easy for even these little remnants of civilization to survive. Technology stopped working, and beasts empowered but also driven mad by raw chakra hunted mankind in the ruins.

Some lucky human individuals survived their mutations too. A rare few benefited, gaining new powers, and even fewer managed to establish bloodlines that bred semi-true. By the time I was born, everyone had small bits and pieces of potential bloodlines in their systems, though far too few could activate them.

Eventually, the pressure of chakra equalized. The fabric of reality, no longer strained by this bleed-over of chakra, eventually healed. Even the chakra, as it was filtered by the living, gradually became less dangerous.

But chakra was not the only thing to have come over. Creatures of foreign realms came too, or, if they did not come, their attention was drawn. From this, we knew the existence of the many varieties of Spirits, Demons, the Celestials, the Gods and Powers and Concepts.

Incredibly dangerous, the very presence of these beings was enough to raise the local chakra levels. Some, like the many varieties of Demons, were too foreign or hostile to safely treat with. Others, the Celestials, were powerful but benign. The Gods, mightier still, might be constant or capricious as their nature. Places of strong chakra could develop Spirits, genius loci, or perhaps these Spirits grew the chakra of their location. There existed beings of Power, absolute dominion over some aspect of reality, and Concepts like Death that embody that aspect of reality itself.

These beings were both blessing and curse. Without them, I found it entirely possible that the era of chaotic chakra would have lasted much longer, and many a human settlement would have failed without the intervention of a well-meaning kami. It was entirely possible for all of mankind to become extinct, or so mutated as to no longer qualify as human. But still, that left many of these beings, or their emissaries and servants, sharing our planet.

The first sealers were exorcists, trying to protect what fragments of civilization remained, and priests who would doctor the soul, trying to remove the corruption of Unbound Chakra. One group, particularly skilled, was the origin of one of the many clans that would eventually be incorporated into the Uzumaki, and the source of our skills in sealing.

There were deeper mysteries still, secrets of these beings greater and more terrible than humanity could ever be, but such were above my needs and capacity. The Biju, though, the Biju's history was something I did learn.

At the site of one of these holes in reality, some say at the site of the first such hole, came to be a tree. It is unknown whether this tree was there, and managed to survive the Unbound Chakra, growing in ways it needed, or perhaps a Spirit or minor God joined with this tree, or the tree was itself a migrating god. What is known is that a mighty tree grew there, and in it was stored the chakra of a wide region. This tree served as a filter, and was part how the world's stability increased.

At one point though there came a wandering tribe of people who claimed "to have descended from the stars." I suspected that they might have been the progeny of those once living in orbital habitats, descended to our planet, Chakyu. It was possible that they were explorers, or left after key systems failed, or perhaps were exiled as a result of some power-play. Regardless, they arrived.

Mistaken as Celestials due to their powers and wondrous items, they knew little of chakra, and settled at the roots of the Great Tree, which kept a wide area safe for human habitation. Not content with their lot and powers, they studied the tree, and sealing.

One day, in either the greatest mistake or greatest success of their experiments, they found a way to drain the chakra of the Tree, and use it to empower humans. Most died, or were mutated with local creatures; of these are numbered the lesser summons clans native to the Nations (as opposed to those greater clans native to near-by realms). Others were transformed and driven mad; they joined the ranks of those considered demons and were killed or sealed.

But of the experiments' success was born the first and only recorded human ascended god, the goddess Kaguya.

Kaguya would eventually give birth to twins, but she was not stable. Never meant to bear the power of a goddess, she gained a type of chakra illness associated with an overpowered chakra system. It drove her to desire greater and greater control of chakra. She began to think of all chakra as hers, and tried to take that of her children.

When they refused, she sought more power from the Shinju Tree. This time however she fell prey to the Tree's curse, and transformed. Far more mighty than any of those who had transformed before, her twisted form was likewise tyrannically strong.

After she took the form of the Jubi, the Ten-Tailed Beast, her children fought her. Having studied with the clan that would become the Uzumaki, and gained great skill, her children succeeded in sealing her. They split her chakra into nine beasts, the Biju.

For a thousand years, the Biju roamed the Nations, mostly keeping to themselves, though occasionally causing a disaster. Then, Madara captured the Kyubi, and Mito began her "great work of peace" by sealing the Beasts. In doing so, she reduced the levels of chakra in nature, and like a slowly breaking dam, the walls of reality were once more letting in more and more influence from Outside. There would be a balance, as was needed, but it could take a long time to arrive.

In the meantime, greater amounts of foreign chakra, unbound chakra, and benign, malignant or unknown but always inhuman influences would act on the Nations. Destabilization and conflict would result. This state of affairs was highly undesirable, and the priests intended to address the issue before it became a catastrophe.

I suspected, though did not say, that my own presence there and then was partially a result of this weakening of the walls of reality. I wasn't sure I liked that implication, and what it meant for any of my future reincarnations and what apocalypses I might be forced to endure or avert. Then again, even back on Earth there were constant wars and conflict throughout human history.

The mission that the priests prepared me for was to conflict with the other Jinchuriki and Biju, and make it impossible for them to be sealed by anyone less than a true Sealing Master, or controlled by the accursed Sharingan, as well as how to help restore the balance.

To this purpose, I had to master four extremely advanced seals. The first seal was a sealing-protection seal. It would make it very difficult to seal whatever the protection seal is applied to. Functionally, it shorted out sealing attachments and twisted the chakra trying to attach to protection-sealed entity, similar to a white-noise generator drowning out lesser sounds. It was also sort of like computer password making a file read-only, in that if you knew how, you could still seal the protected being; the priests left that in so that the Biju couldn't attack Uzushio.

The second seal was a Sharingan-proofing seal. It would, when fed chakra, disrupt genjutsu, and was optimized for Biju levels of chakra. It would also power a reflective coating around the eyes using naturally available chakra, and absorb the vast majority of chakra that shared the Sharingan's unique hybrid human-demon signal.

The third seal was a spirit-binding seal; it would seal the sealing-protection seal and the Sharingan-proofing seal to the Biju's spirit so that they could not be damaged by physical force. Functionally, it was the least impressive in effect. But it was by far and away the most impressive in difficulty and construction.

The fourth seal was a small but incredibly dense energy storage seal; I would feed it chakra from the Kyubi, then release it into the atmosphere. Since the Biju normally didn't exert themselves to their maximum levels of chakra gathering from the local environment, I could actually match the average chakra output of half the Biju taken together using just the Kyubi. This would lessen the degradation of the barriers greatly, especially since Jinchuriki still leaked some of their imprisoned being's chakra.

The seal to bind the Kyubi to me would be permanent, binding us at the level of our spirits, but could be released with an act of will at the moment of my death; the release was buried deep inside. We needed a proper seal, rather than whatever Mito came up with, but equally the Konoha sealers would know, and claim they were cheated, if the seal were "temporary." This seal, though, the Master of the Priestly faction would apply himself.

None of these seals were easy. In fact, they were hideously difficult. I had previously achieved fifth level Intuition, and was working on my sixth. A sealer was typically capable of learning seals at most two levels above their Intuition without excessive levels of effort and specialized education; even then, it would be risky.

Each seal I was meant to learn was based on level seven seals, with some elements from level eight seals. Each day I'd spend ten or more hours being tutored by the Master of the Priests' faction. It was a great honor. It was a mental and, as my reinforcement began taking its toll, a physical torture.

But I finally mastered the seals and their subtleties to the Masters' standards, barely four days before I was meant to depart. Our first stop was the Fire Daimyo's court to be presented, then we would continue on our way to Konohagakure along with the party that contained the sealers responsible for my future bond with Kurama, the Kyubi. In the process of mastering the seals I achieved sixth level Intuition, and became the youngest recorded Master Sealer of the Uzumaki Clan. Officially, however, for my protection, I was ranked an Expert.

I spent those last days with my family, other than some hurried gathering of my supplies and gifts. I had received a full set of sealed-armor from the Priests, whose Master was apparently something of a specialist in the art; the sealed-armor was a set of leather bands, blood-bound to me and summon-able, that was the closest I could come to full Body-Seals until I was at least fourteen years old. It would give a fair bit of passive protection from near-misses, and when active could tank even a regular Jonin for a hit or two; easily enough time to surprise them.

Hikaru jii-san gave me several sets of prepared wards; they were enough to thoroughly guard my future home, as well as a smaller set for traveling. He also helped set up a secure linked communications network between me, him, my parents and the Sealing Department. The Naval Weapons Group gave me a two way inanimate-transportation seal to transfer designs and prototypes, as well as ammunition reloads for my Pelican to and from my location.

Kaa-san gave me new clothes, and Tou-san two sets of kunai and shuriken with short-range recall seals, one being for Sachiko. Both gave me their advice and their love. Kushina gave me a picture of herself, and the order as "the future first female Daimyo of Whirlpool" not to forget home, and to call often.

Finally, laden down with knowledge and supplies and enough seals to fight a small war, carrying my swords and wearing my travel-garb, I was prepared. I made my goodbyes to my family and Kushina, and after some words from Kazuo-sama our forty-strong party left for the Fire Daimyo's court.

I'm not too proud to admit that as I stood on the deck of our ship at sunset, and looked back at Uzushiogakure in the distance, the image of my home was blurred by the tears in my eyes.

Chapter 16: Interlude 1: The Retainer.

My name is Hisakawa Sachiko. I was born into a family of ninja, retainers to a mid-ranked Uzumaki noble. Mother grew pregnant when on a mission, and died in birth; she lived long enough to name me Sachiko or "joyous child", a name that would ensure I knew I was loved despite the outcome.

And so I was raised by Auntie and Uncle so that I might serve as they did. I worked hard, and excelled from a young age, showing the grace and intelligence necessary to be trained not as a brute, but as a subtle blade. Whether a hidden protector or invisible assassin, I learned to walk the halls of power and be of use not only as a weapon to my master, but as an assistant too.

My master used to be Master Uzumaki, the grandfather of my current master, Master Daichi. The first time I heard of Master Daichi, I must have been five years old, and Master Daichi had just been born. Master Uzumaki always appeared with the stoic visage he was so famous for; this visage, along with his martial skills and Noble Sea-Hawk summons (who selected only the most honorable of samurai, and had served as his eyes) had earned him the sobriquet of "Whirlpool's Sea-Hawk Samurai" when serving in the navy many, many years ago.

But, in secret, he was a very caring man; I think he simply felt it unsightly to show this. He would have us, his ninja retainers, check up on his children, especially Kohaku sama, Master Daichi's father, who was somewhat estranged. This duty fell to Uncle, a jovial and joking man with his family who was only too happy to report to us about the successful birth.

And so, I grew up with reports of Master Daichi. I learned when I was six how he was already walking, and speaking. I learned when I was seven, and he two, that he was already actively practicing calligraphy to manage seals in the future. When I was eight, I formally became Uncle's apprentice; I was in the room and saw Master Uzumaki's hidden joy when Uncle reported that Master Daichi was progressing well, and likely to turn into a fine man and a credit to Uzushiogakure and the family.

Uncle said that this was training; that even at their most emotional, men like Master Uzumaki are hard to discern, and that by studying his reactions, I would be able to understand the reactions of other stoic men. I think, however, that Uncle merely wished to share the details of the charge he watched from afar. Part of this storytelling from Uncle to me was that there is a universal rule: servants gossip about their masters. We may be more circumspect, call it Espionage/Counter-Intelligence training, keep things "in family", but we ninja are subject to this rule too.

I learned of Master Uzumaki's relationship with his son this way, and when I did I remember being sad. It might have been amusing had I not cared, but the whole thing was, at least as it was described by Uncle, a misunderstanding. Master Uzumaki wanted his son to master a certain level of the sword and traditional arts before branching out. His son, headstrong and young and not suited to hearing the subtleties of his seemingly cool father, disobeyed. Then, to make matters worse, refused to apologize.

While Master Uzumaki would have likely allowed it, or forgiven his son, his honor would not let him let the disobedience lie. While the son married, and propriety was served, for years things were cold between them, though Master Uzumaki always kept my family, and the other ninja retainers, busy with updates in his son's situation.

As time passed, Master Daichi's achievements grew, and my involvement, peripheral as it was, increased. I tested my stealth against his notice, and watched that first fireworks show he made. I was aware of many of his greatest successes and achievements, and, to be honest (something I may only be with myself and my master), both highly impressed and intimidated.

Master Daichi was beyond someone you could call a prodigy or a genius. He learned at a rate that astounded his teachers and drew mention of being a reincarnation of a Saint or Sage; while in most this would be at least somewhat sarcastic, the tone used when discussing Master Daichi had an underlying tone of semi-fearful belief. Some were worried, or afraid of Master Daichi, thinking him somewhat unnatural; others almost worshipful.

I, I was merely inspired. And Master Uzumaki could not have been prouder at his grandson's accomplishments, though again, it was impossible to see.

At the age of ten, I watched as Master Daichi worked on some secret project which clearly failed. He had poured effort into it, working harder than I ever had, and all self-driven. He had even managed to slightly worsen his health, truly a feat for one with the Uzumaki vitality. I knew such failure could break full grown men, let alone children, and I wanted against training to comfort him at the time, tell him not to give up. It proved unnecessary; he immediately bounced back, and after resting himself, was back to work.

When I was eleven, and "showing great promise as a kunoichi", Master Daichi was collaborating with the Naval Weapons Research Group, and developed the Cyclone seals. His involvement and the entire project itself may have been secret, but I knew. I also knew how revolutionary these seals were; I heard from a cousin who watches the Navy that they necessitated entirely different naval strategy and tactics, and ensured Uzushio's dominance at sea for generations. And yet, I also knew that the boy showed less arrogance than I held in my heart for my comparatively meager skills. I thought then that Master Daichi would not be a bad person to serve.

Perhaps Uncle noticed this, and saw which way the wind blew when Master Daichi was working on those marvels of surveillance and destruction, the Pelicans; this may have been why he had Auntie train me to act as an assistant to a man, teaching more than the noble-lady's attendant's arts I had learned before. Whatever the reason, I thank him. When Master Uzumaki made the announcement that he was searching for someone to become Master Daichi's retainer, I volunteered, and was immediately on the short list of candidates.

During the interview with Master Uzumaki and his senior ninja retainer, I listed my qualifications. I spoke of how I was trained to act within the bounds of noble society as hidden guard and invisible blade, how my skills with weapons, stealth, poisons and illusions would all be of use and complement Master Daichi's own, greater talents. I was asked many questions, but there was one which, I believe, was responsible for my being given this honor.

"If selected," Master Uzumaki began in that slow, deliberate way of his, "how should I present you to my grandson?"

And so I told him, how Master Daichi's compassion would be the best way of him accepting happily.

Master Uzumaki did as I suggested.

Though I spent the four months before our departure in brutal training, endlessly learning combat skills from his father, and though his mother insisted in cramming some small knowledge of sealing into my mind when I too exhausted to move, and though I would be leaving my home and all I knew, I was happy.

I had a master I could be proud to serve for the rest of my life: Uzumaki Daichi.

Chapter 17: Enter the Hokage

The journey was long and uninteresting. For someone leaving their village for the first time in their memory, it might have been more significant; I, however, had traveled fairly diversely back on Earth, and had long since come to the belief that the best part of travel was finally arriving where you wanted to be. Travelling by boat and foot was far less pleasant than plane and car, and just reinforced that belief.

I had suggested using Pelicans to drop off a summoning seal linked to a circle in Uzushiogakure; it was deemed an unnecessary expenditure of energy, unnecessary exposure of strategic capability, and an unnecessary departure from tradition. All of these but the last seemed reasonable, and so I endured the trip as well as I could.

Admittedly, the first leg, while on a Medium Naval Escort ship was quite enjoyable. I had always loved sailing and the water, and the weather and currents weren't so bad as to make me sea-sick. While some of the other members of the party were not so copacetic, Sachiko too was lucky enough to have a strong stomach. Unfortunately, Uzushiogakure was close to Fire's landmass, and so we were soon on a road headed to the national capital and the Fire Daimyo's palace.

Of my presentation at court I'll say little; it was highly formalized, and something of an afterthought when compared with introducing our new Ambassador, (one of) my theoretical boss(es), who was replacing the previous representative. We traded eight of the party for eight of the ambassadorial staff who were headed to home after our short detour to Konohagakure, and continued on our way.

Konohagakure was somewhat more interesting, if only because I was going to be living there for a while (though it would not be, would never be, home). We were escorted by an honor guard to our new Consulate and washed and dressed for our visit to the Hokage's Tower, the center of their bureaucracy.

I was, once again, in full regalia. On my Haori's (formal jacket-like robe's) lapels were displayed the device of Whirlpool; beneath, slightly smaller, was my personal device, a stylized Hawk's head (which I inherited from my family) with the kanji for "seal" on its forehead. I wore swords which were slightly comically oversized compared to my frame, and I couldn't help but chuckle at my image.

I looked like a brat wearing the most expensive Halloween costume ever. I sobered when Sachiko looked at me inquisitively and shook my head. Hidden out of sight behind a sash were the remnants of Kushina's tear-stains.

Sachiko too was looking sharp. She had foregone her hidden weapons, though not those accessories that could be used as improvised ones (seriously, I think the only reason these women had hair like that was to make weapons of the spikes they used to style it). She was in a female dress-uniform remarkably similar to what she wore under Ojii-sama, though bearing my device rather than his. I knew her well enough by now to tell she was slightly nervous.

We were joined by my nominal deputy, Minami Ichirou, and his assistant. Ichirou-san was, at least in theory, a samurai. In reality, while he might have been the match for some peasant bandits, Ichirou hardly qualified to be compared to the death-dealing human blenders that truly earned their title. Instead, he was well experienced in trade, and slightly less in politics.

I had Sachiko investigate him during the journey; she found he was a moderate Progressive, one who would likely focus on creating trade and mutual profit, but not increase any military dependencies on Uzushiogakure's part. Ichirou would take care of the day-to-day business, and much of the more formal events too. Our consulate also had a trio of servants attached to it whom I had been assured were discrete and efficient (read Uzushiogakure ninja), though I did not interact much with them.

While we would all be living on Consulate grounds, Sachiko and I had our residence in a different building, a bit more removed from the public and closer to the attached training ground and dojo. It was actually a pretty good deal for me. I had free lodging, and was being paid a fairly generous stipend by Kazuo-kaka as an appointed official, as well as a different small stipend as an activated militia member by Kazuo-sama; I suspected this allowance was another way of his showing appreciation for my stepping up to live in this foreign land.

To make my financial situation even better, I would still keep whatever pay Konoha owed for my service. It wasn't quite as much money as I had been making through the work on my inventions with Hikaru jii-san, but I wasn't precluded from continuing that remotely, at least part-time. On the expenses side, I had myself and Sachiko to support, keeping us clothed appropriately (which could get a bit expensive with formal wear for growing boys), supplied with gear, and of course fed.

The walk to the Hokage was reasonably short; I wasn't sure whether Konohagakure or Uzushiogakure had paid for the land, but whoever had definitely didn't stint. Such a decently sized tract so close to the center of the village was definitely expensive. The villagers were somewhat taken by our procession; that kind of pomp and circumstance was rarely seen in ninja spaces unless the day was a major festival, in which case it was expected.

The ceremony where we were official greeted and welcomed by the Hokage was emotionally delicious. Mito, Danzo, a gaggle of clan heads and several other important Konoha figures were there. It was a good thing that Sachiko had been training my sensing skills towards ninja while on the trip; she would do this thing where if she had a joke or comment, she'd hold it in unless I ordered her to speak. The trick was detecting these moments; I'm not sure if she knew I'd caught on yet, but she was basically trading sensing progress in return for her lightening up a bit.

Still, if I hadn't been watching their chakra carefully for their reaction, I never would have caught it. When I was introduced as the Consul, they were shocked.

It only took me a moment to realize why. See, Kazuo-kaka had played a bit of a joke on them; this wasn't it, though the reaction was what I was looking for. When Kazuo-kaka sent the missive of our agreement to their terms, he further negotiated this consulship. In the letter, he somewhat ambiguously stated that Uzumaki Daichi, his retainer, Minami Ichirou, his assistant, and three servants would be sent when he sent "the best candidate to host the Kyubi" and the sealing team to ensure the transfer went well. It never actually mentioned that I was the best host candidate.

What caught up the Konohagakure dignitaries though, and a mistake I never would have suspected such a powerful ninja village to make, was my identity. I had a very distant cousin, about as distant as an Uzumaki could get, who was also called Daichi. He was a somewhat aged veteran of the Uzushiogakure Guard who had achieved a decent rank with a good reputation as a ship captain. The only reason I knew about him was that occasionally messages meant for one of us would find the other. Konohagakure must have read Uzumaki Daichi, and assumed that the other Daichi was getting the post as a kind of retirement posting.

Instead, they got me in all of my eight year old, 4'4" glory.

When they realized that Kushina wasn't there, there were even mutters in the less important ranks of dignitaries. I very carefully, and very pointedly, did not give a glance of superiority to Sachiko at our superior breeding and manners, but I sure as hell emoted it enough that any decent sensor, and most Jonin, would have picked up on it.

I wasn't sure how many there had the diplomatic training necessary to see what kind of a win we had just had, but I was paying attention to the Fire Daimyo's representative to Konohagakure, and he definitely did. I was still filled with a slightly warm feeling when we (myself and Ichirou-san, as well as the Head Sealing Priest and the previous Ambassador to the Fire Daimyo, accompanied by our assistants) were invited to an "intimate" tea with the Hokage and his three chief advisers (and their own attendants), presided over by the Fire Daimyo's representative. Mito was apparently too poorly for much more exertion, else she'd have been attending as well as a "family member".

I grinned, and thought 'let the games begin'.

We met in a room near the Hokage's office. Seating us was a bit interesting. On the one hand, I was the chief of the diplomatic mission, and so I was senior. On the other hand, the Head Priest was the second most senior figure in Uzushiogakure's Sealing Department, my own senior, and hugely influential within the Clan and village.

But, he gave the signal in Sealing Priest Cant, a set of signals used to communicate when doing complicated sealing chants and hand-chains that I should lead, and so I took the seat at the head, facing across from the Hokage. The assistants, of course, sat at the edges of the room looking like painted statues. Sarutobi just looked at me for a moment, taking stock of me.

I'll admit, it was a bit nervous-making. Sarutobi was already something of a legend, and a much bigger bad-ass than I. But I had stared Death in the face (the concept, not personification), and it would take far more than a stern look to phase me.

"It seems you were expecting my cousin, Hokage-sama. I would have thought that Konohagakure's intelligence apparatus would have warned you when I was presented to the Fire Daimyo. I apologize for any confusion." I swear Danzo, Mr. "No Emotions Danzo," twitched. It's not common that you could get one over on the Hokage like this, and I wanted to show that I refused to be cowed.

A moment later, the prototype of Sarutobi's eventual "lovable-grandfather" mask, in this case the "friendly-uncle" mask, slipped into action. Or perhaps his business mask slipped off. I was unsure, and I suspected even Sarutobi didn't know; truly, ninja prodigies and multiple personality disorder were uncomfortably similar.

"There's no need to apologize for anything, my boy. I assume your Uzumaki blood is particularly strong?" Urgh. I hated being called anyone's anything (unless I was sleeping with them, that's a bit different, then they could call me their dear or lover or whatever), let alone their "boy". It was a calculated parry that didn't answer to the (possible) failure of their intelligence, and insulted me at the same time. But he made a mistake asking so obliquely about my age.

"If I were a boy, Hokage-sama, I would have to be recalled to Uzushiogakure. It is against our law for children to fill such positions." Let's see you backpedal now, motherfucker. If you don't and your statement stands, I have legitimate cause to claim dismissal under our Alliance, and the whole Kyubi thing falls apart.

"It was merely a figure of speech, I meant no commentary on your adulthood, Daichi-san." That was a point to me, bringing us back to even. Now to poke again…

"And as for my blood, it is strong." There was an almost visible relaxation that I wasn't as young as I looked that I allowed before crushing it. "That said, I don't believe I look any younger than I am; I recently turned eight. Do I look younger, Hokage-sama?"

The Hokage at this point was about forty years old, a little younger than my cumulative age. He may have been more experienced with diplomatic matters, but I was running a pretty hefty mental reinforcement giving me comparatively greater brain-power, and was likely a fair bit more intelligent than he was to begin with. Most importantly, I wasn't behaving how he expected and it had been keeping him on his back foot for the most part.

If he thought this would be easy, he was dead wrong. I felt like the Daimyo's representative wanted to cradle his face in his hands at the absolute mess this was becoming, but the Hokage recovered fairly well.

"You must be very impressive then, to have been appointed."

"Thank you, Hokage-sama, for your judgment of my abilities. I hardly need say the same of you; you must know how skilled you are, as you would not be Hokage else-wise." That was a lovely turn of phrase. Just confused enough that it could be a legitimate compliment awkwardly worded because of my young age and the formal language, but at the same time vaguely hinting that the Hokage was less skilled than he appeared.

Deciding to interject and give time for people to re-evaluate the circumstances, our mediator redirected the conversation to meaningless platitudes about the trip here, the local vegetation and flowers and such. Eventually it turned back towards business and the advisers joined into the conversation; we fenced a bit more, less aggressively, and with far more advantage to Sarutobi. I carefully avoided any openings that led to Kushina's absence until eventually Danzo lost patience.

"And what of Kushina-sama? Was her arrival delayed?"

"Kushina-sama? Why would she be coming? Did you receive another faulty informant's report?" I could see the annoyance in his eyes.

"The agreement we signed during the Uzushiogakure Epidemic was for Tsunade to go with all speed and do what she could as a medic; in return, Uzushiogakure would send us Kushina-sama to become the next host of the Kyubi." He managed to say it without grinding his teeth in annoyance, I was impressed. But I was definitely going to turn up the heat.

"Ah yes. The Uzushiogakure Epidemic. A true tragedy, but you already knew that, didn't you Danzo-san?" Let's see what pigeons that cat manages to catch, I thought as the Hokage's chakra pulsed in what I thought was interest. "And such a shame that though Tsunade arrived, she was too late to add to the efforts of our own doctors." No reason not to make them seem like petty contract-lawyers (which they were, the bastards). "But, as for Kushina-sama, I remember no such agreement."

By this point, everyone's attention was solidly on our back-and-forth. Danzo's irritation was apparent; he must have been seriously pissed.

"Do you deny that Uzushiogakure promised us a host for the Kyubi?"

"Ah, I see the problem now. I suppose you have not had a chance to read the documents we presented you with yet. Fortunately, I prepared and have brought copies. Sachiko." At the command, Sachiko passed me copies of two documents. "The first is the agreement between Konohagakure and Uzushiogakure for support. The second is Kazuo-dono and Kazuo-kaka's missives as to how Uzushiogakure is resolving its agreement. Perhaps you should review them."

I bowed, and presented the documents to a silent Hokage. In fact, the whole room was silent and still. When I mentioned Kazuo-dono and Kazuo-kaka as two separate individuals, I like the think that Sarutobi, Danzo, and their other lickspittles arseholes clenched in knowledge of the reaming they were about to receive.

Ok, granted, not such a great reaming, but they thought they were getting sweet, naive Kushina and got her rather spikier, sharper cousin instead, the same person who had at least held his own at the adult's table. Let them have their minor victory; may they choke on it and on me.

The Hokage read the documents, going over the provisions of my secondment several times before passing it to Danzo and looking up at me.

"So you're to be the next host." It wasn't quite a question, more a statement, but I nodded and answered anyways.

"Exactly. I was originally intending to report tomorrow morning in my person of Whirlpool Reserve Militia, Recruit-Sergeant Uzumaki Daichi. Would that still be agreeable?" I asked with the faintest hint of amusement in my tone.

"Of course. Nine o'clock?"

"I'll be here, Hokage-sama."

By this point Danzo had finished and demonstrated that he really hadn't quite recovered his calm yet.

"So you're the candidate? Do you have the Adamantine Chains?" That, that was over the line, especially in this diplomatic setting where I represented the Daimyo of Whirlpool and our meeting was mediated by the Fire Daimyo's representative. If this weren't informal, I might have had to call him out in an honor duel or demand punishment from the Hokage; I wasn't quite sure which. So, of course, I capitalized.

"Are you seriously challenging the word of the Daimyo of Whirlpool in front of me, his official representative to Konohagakure? You forget your place, ninja."

See, socially speaking, only the Hokage out-ranked me as he was lord of a Great Village. Normally I, as a lesser appointee of a Daimyo and Danzo, as a greater adviser to the Hokage, would have equal-ish rank. It depended somewhat on circumstance; when acting in some of my duties, I was considered Kazuo-kaka's direct representative, in which case I ranked higher.

But, in another sense, ninja ranked below any samurai, even so poor an example as Ichirou, save for perhaps the Kage who was recognized as an independent city-lord by his Daimyo, and some ninja clans which had their own patents of nobility. I ranked, as did many Uzumaki, as a samurai. As soon as Danzo questioned my Daimyo's signed documents to my face, I was able to rebuke him.

And now the bastard would have to bow his head or face censure; if he insulted me or the Daimyo at all at this point I could claim insult and break the agreement on my Lord's behalf. If we were somewhere like the Land of Iron, I could request, and would have to be granted, his head. Unfortunately for this instance at least, the Land of Fire was somewhat less permissive towards the samurai class.

He bowed in dogeza.

"I apologize for my thoughtless words. Please forgive me." He stayed down, as was proper until I acknowledged him.

"I think that's both of our problem, Danzo." I purposefully left out the honorific here. "We speak, and act, without thinking of the potential consequences. You know, the infiltrators who spread the plague to Uzushiogakure were similar, acting without thinking. Had they thought, they would have known that had that disease spread, it would have spread throughout all the Elemental Nations. It might have even killed them, the ones that spread it. So, either they trusted our quarantine measures, or they already had a cure, or they were foolish. Not to mention the kind of damage that Uzushiogakure's sealers might have done were they made mad with grief. But I digress. I should not blame you for the same fault I have, neh? Raise your head, Danzo-san, your misspoken words are forgotten."

By the variation in people's chakra, that warning was well understood. Let's see you wiggle out of this one, Danzo.

"Now, I think we are all tired. It has been a long trip, and an eventful day. I will come calling at nine in the morning, as we discussed, Hokage-sama." And so after a series of goodbyes, we left and went back to the Consulate.

Along the way, the Head Priest came up next to me and after activating a privacy seal spoke.

"You're playing a dangerous game."

"I know, Master. But, in this town, it's the only game to play, I fear."

"Are you properly prepared?"

"They need me. And I've already taken measures."

"And these measures are sufficient?"

"I would say more than. And have no fear, they breach no Laws."

"Good. I'm glad you're prepared. It would be a shame to lose such a promising Sealer. Good night."

"Good night, Master."

I had taken measures too. I had used up the majority of the chakra I had been hoarding over the previous years after the failure of Operation: Hammer of God. Just before leaving Uzushiogakure, I initiated Project Thor: The Sequel.

It was an upgraded version of Hammer of God, using the strongest anti-laser shields I could come up with, a slightly customized visual distortion seal that would hopefully throw off radar targeting, illusion seals for spoof-targets, heat-sink seals designed to deal with volcanoes to reduce the damage from laser fire that did get through, and twice as many rods as necessary. Honestly, with the seals already designed or stock seals available with my greater knowledge level, the thing was almost embarrassingly simple to prepare, and only took me a couple days to design and build.

The trigger was a seal on my body; as soon as I died, or failed to renew the signal on a monthly basis, the bombardment would activate, with the payload seal already in an optimal firing position above Konohagakure. I included a chakra transfer seal to maintain the anti-void shield around the payload; it was barely noticeable against my reserves. I was still scared shitless at the idea of pissing off the Orbital Fortress, but figured if I was dead or being tortured it was worth it.

Sachiko had spotted me launching the seal the night before arriving in Konohagakure. I had warned her that if I died, or was taken, to be out of the village within 10 minutes and activate her emergency recall seal if possible. If being the Jinchuriki ever failed to protect me, I figured that this would.

As I went to sleep, I had a single thought: I may have gone a bit overboard with Danzo.

Chapter 18: Welcome to Konohagakure

First thing the next day I woke, dressed, ate a breakfast prepared by Sachiko, and left for my meeting with the Hokage with her in tow (there was no way I was leaving her alone anywhere until I was more comfortable there).

The meeting with the Hokage was fairly pro-forma, but important nonetheless; this was, after all, when I was going to try and buy myself four years before facing any missions. I saw no reason to become a combat asset, not when I had had barely any legitimate ninja training in things like survival, stealth, illusions, poisons; hell, I couldn't even throw kunai.

I had no reason to graduate early from the academy either. No, I wanted to grow into my body, and be as powerful and awesome as possible when I finally had to actually fight someone. The longer Sachiko and I had to train, the happier I'd be. I never understood wanting to graduate early and enter a front-line position. It didn't matter if someone was the best five year old, or ten year old ever; all they needed to do was meet a single stronger enemy, whatever the age, and they'd be a corpse.

In fact, enemies often prioritized the youngest. They were the most promising after all, but oh-so easy to snuff out while they were still young and weak rather than full-grown threats. No, I was of the mind to spend as long as possible making sure that by the time I saw combat my odds of survival (and those of Sachiko's survival) were maximized.

I vaguely remembered that Hiruzen had a soft spot for kids. Hopefully that would extend to me despite last night. Or maybe he'd like to keep me in a known place watched by his soldiers during the day. Either way, I wanted four uninterrupted years at the Academy, the premier ninja-educating school of the Village.

After being let into the Hokage's office (having left Sachiko at the door), I reported with a snap.

"Hokage-sama! In accordance with the wishes of my Lord, I, Recruit Sergeant Uzumaki Daichi of the Whirlpool Militia have been indefinitely seconded to Konohagakure's Ninja Corps!" Then I bowed and held position. It may have been in a bit of a high-pitched voice, but I liked my greeting. I was dressed in a fairly snazzy work-dress uniform from the Uzushio Sealing Department, including my swords and High Expert Sealer patch. Today I looked like a brat playing at being a soldier instead of playing at being a lord. I was fairly sure the Hokage was amused.

"At ease!" he replied. I relaxed my bow. "So, you've been sent here to become the next Jinchuriki?"

"Yes sir! With your approval, we will prepare and perform the Sealing in the secure room at the Consulate three days hence." It was actually quite amusing to play the dutiful subordinate when we both know I was anything but.

"Very good. Other than your potential as a Jinchuriki, please list your skills and attributes."

"Yes sir! I am eight years old. I have been trained by my father, who is from a samurai family, and by my mother and her father, who are both sealers. I am qualified as an Advanced Instructor of the Whirlpool-Fist style, and a Basic Instructor of the Whirlpool-Sword style. I am effective with Wind and Water chakra techniques. I am an Expert Sealer. I can use the Adamantine Sealing Chains, and use chakra flow techniques through them. I am a fair sensor. I am familiar with court protocol, and have some diplomatic training. I possess a retainer, who has been trained to be my assistant and Chief of Household by her family who are themselves retainers to my Grandfather."

"An impressive list, especially for one so young. What would you like to do?"

"Sir! I would like to go to the Academy."

"Really? Why? I would think you would want to be a ninja immediately, or maybe work in the Sealing Corps."

"Not so. I am only on secondment, I may not grant Uzushiogakure's or my Clan's sealing secrets. As for the Academy, I will receive valuable training in stealth, field medicine, survival, tracking, espionage, infiltration, interrogation and counter-intelligence. I may also learn about poisons and illusions. Further, I am somewhat unused to people my age, as I have been tutored. I, I believe socialization may be useful."

I made sure to make the last bit sound a bit hesitant. I was sure Sarutobi saw through it, but was hoping that he thought I was trying to play him to be able to make friends because I actually wanted friends, rather than wanting another four years before combat. Then again, it's possible he was thinking I was operating on an even deeper level after last night. Or a total fool for challenging Danzo. I couldn't tell.

This was why I hated dealing with ninja and diplomacy; seals at least you could test, no matter how complicated they got or how weird the results. With ninja, I always felt like the Dread Pirate Roberts from the Princess Bride in the scene with the poison. Like him, I also felt that desire to attack everything to make sure I got my target. After a pause, the Hokage finally nodded and answered.

"Very good. It is good to know your limitations, and attempt to account for them. I'll grant your request to join the Academy. A new class is entering in three weeks, you will join them. I assume you want your retainer to accompany you?"

"Yes sir!"

"I assume she can keep up. Very well, I'll place her with your group. Now, I've arranged for Jiraiya, one of my students, to give you a tour. He's waiting outside. Dismissed." I blinked, a bit taken aback that he hadn't asked any questions about what I'd insinuated last night, then bowed again.

"Thank you sir!" I replied, and marched out the door. I saw Sachiko very studiously not looking at a man who was, at a guess, in his early twenties and inspecting her rather blatantly. His massive mane of white hair made it difficult to tell his age. 'So,' I thought, 'this is Jiraiya'. The fact he was ogling my retainer instantly got my dander up. I walked up to him, and looked him up and down before sneering slightly.

"I had already heard you were a pervert, but I didn't think you were so depraved as to ogle children, ero-Jiraiya-san." He just spluttered while a nearby secretary had to hide her laugh as a cough. We began walking towards the exit.

"I wasn't ogling her, dammit! And what do you mean you already heard I was a pervert! I'm a super-pervert!" Wow. I did not expect that; the world had been so much more serious than in canon. I really didn't think that he would actually be that insane. Maybe it was just to get us to drop our guard.

"Even in Uzushiogakure, we've heard of you, Jiraiya," (this was a total lie) I said, and waited a moment for him to puff himself up in pride. "Yes, the great failure of Sarutobi Hokage-sama, his student Jiraiya who unlike his team-mates excels only in perversion." I could tell that hit home a bit but Jiraiya just laughed it off.

"Wow. You go right for the kill, don't you kid? Now I know why Sensei said to watch out for your tongue. But I really wasn't ogling her, just trying to spot all her hidden weapons; I kept noticing more." That bastard. Giving good compliments to my retainer was totally not on; I trusted this giant prick about as far as I could throw him without using chakra.

"See, Sachiko-san, when a no-good man like him gives you a compliment like that, do you know what to do?"

"No, Daichi-sama, what should I do?" she asked softly and as if deeply interested in the subject.

"You ignore him. The compliments of a no good man are less than the barking of a dog."

"Ah. I see. I will bear this in mind, Daichi-sama." I loved Sachiko; she played the perfect straight-man.

"Alright, kid, alright. I get the point. Eyes off, hands off. In fact, we'll start the tour now. Happy?"

"Hmm. You're much better than Danzo-san, you know. Much more subtle, and I'm mostly left without an over-riding desire to explode you." I told Jiraiya that I understood he was trying to take my measure. It would be dangerous to be underestimated too much, just as it would to be overestimated too much. Even an accurate accounting could prove dangerous, but I had to do and Jiraiya was a decent sort in canon (mostly). An idiot, and idealistic, but at something least trying to do good.

"You're really sharp, huh. I never would have believed there was an eight year old like you without meeting you, Daichi-kun." I nodded at the compliment. "Alright, let's get going on that tour."

Jiraiya was a surprisingly competent tour guide, and we ended the day with a much better understanding of not just the best places to eat and shop, but of Konohagakure's identity, culture and idiosyncrasies.

Konoha was a completely different place to Uzushiogakure. It was significantly larger, less prosperous, and had a high combat tempo that resulted in a high attrition rate. Because of this, Konohagakure had some fairly unique solutions to their particular situation.

If you have any ideas from the anime or manga, forget them; the manga/anime massively misrepresented the numbers of ninja that there were. First off, there wasn't one academy, there were several, and even more outposts throughout the Land of Fire that could train genin. Overall, including reserves, logistic corps, etc., Konoha could call on a little more than twenty thousand ninja, and graduated over two thousand a year out of a static village population somewhere north of two hundred thousand. The Land of Fire itself could call on another fifteen to twenty thousand more ninja, as independent ninja Clans or retainers that could be activated by the Daimyo.

Of those that were "active" Konoha ninja, about eight thousand were combat-fit but crippled in some way that made them have to leave the active forces, or just too old; ninja with long-distance mobility issues, for example, could not be active-combat forces. Many of them still taught, worked in the hospital or in logistics, or any of a dozen different departments that don't actually result in doing frequent missions; all did regular training as part of the reserve.

Of the twelve thousand remaining potential combat troops, fully half were employed as ordered by the Daimyo; they could be attached as special forces units in the national military, acted as couriers or internal spies, and policed the border and roads. This was where most of the "genin corps," those genin too unpromising to be "elite genin" on the fast-track to Jonin path, and the "chunin corps", most of whom were once part of the genin corps, ended up.

Those who tried out for elite genin (like the Rookie Nine or Twelve or whatever highlighted by the show) got two chances. The first was when they had the Jonin test. Just being allowed to take the Jonin test required graduating in one of the top classes, and even still only about a third passed.

If they failed, the new ninja went to the genin academy, rather than the student academy, with the rest of the leftovers from the academy program who never even got a chance. They were then given general forces, specialization, and electives training. They then got to try the Jonin test one more time, along with the most promising of the genin who never got to try in the first place.

If they failed that test, then they faced another one to two years of training at the genin academy, leaving when they either tested (and passed) as a genin, or tested into a specialist training program (medic, sealing, genjutsu, ninjutsu, strategy, stealth etc.). Out of a class of two thousand graduates, only two to four hundred would end up in the elite-track, or one of the specialization programs that gave similar benefits and reputation.

All of its reserves, logistical requirements, and the Daimyo's requirements left Konoha with only six thousand active duty combat-forces. About two thousand of these were kept as a guard in and around Konoha, though about half of the guards were "paper-guards" who trained with guard units, but spent most of the actual "guarding" time in the hospital or Torture and Interrogation or whatever.

There were also about four hundred ANBU. Another eight hundred were hunter-nin, or on long-term infiltration or recruitment assignments across the countries. Tsunade, when Naruto retrieved her to become Hokage was probably (at least nominally) one of these. Within the village, there was the hospital staff, who also operated the combat-medic training center, Torture and Interrogation, Sealing Corps, Academy Staff, Specialist Training Staff, Cryptography, Strategy Office, etc., all taking up about another eight hundred active duty ninja. This left Konoha with only two thousand active duty ninja to deploy at will on mercenary missions.

While two thousand were not that many to be the principle bread-winners of the village, it was still one sixth of the total active combat forces, and they kept up a very high combat tempo. Casualties above twenty percent in dead ninja alone (and thus much higher if including crippled ninja) per year would be considered good when dealing with the active mercenary ninja, and these losses were especially concentrated in the fresh genin ranks. Some years casualties might rise above eighty percent, especially as a shadow-war with a foreign village was shaping up. When combined with the losses suffered in the forces working for the Daimyo, reinforcements were crucial to continued operation.

About two hundred of these two thousand active workers were jonin, not all of whom would or could mentor genin-teams, and about a hundred and twenty genin would join the elite-track every year coming from a total of four different academies.

The competition was fierce, and this was where the Clans truly shined. They may have only supplied a tenth to a fifth of the Konoha forces (clans tended to keep some of their ninja self-employed, so they functioned similar to reserves), but they were consistently better trained, with specialist skills, better gear, and there was something to be said for serious selective breeding. The acknowledged members of major and minor clans, whether main or branch houses, between them made up sixty percent of jonin or special jonin, forty percent of Elite Chunin, and twenty five percent of the total chunin.

Another little factoid; Konoha, and the other villages, were obsessed with breeding (not that Uzushio was all that different). Most clans in the anime were Great Clans. A combination of numbers (typically above two hundred mission-capable ninja each, only a fraction of which actively worked for the village), talent, bloodline ability and accumulated wealth made them indispensable to the village. Their leaders had automatic seats on the Hokage's Security Council. The Hyuga, Uchiha, Nara, and similar clans were among these. Then, there were the minor clans. Typically between twenty and fifty ninja, they tended to have lesser bloodlines or secret techniques, often with some sort of instability or weakness, but the number of these lesser clans made them an important part of Konoha's might.

Clans all had charters that laid out what it took to be a member, and there were typically at least two, sometimes three or four categories someone might fall into. Main members would be full clan members of the main house. If there was a line of succession, they were probably in it, or could challenge for leadership when it became available. Branch members were recognized as members of the clan, but typically ineligible for leadership, and had lesser stations compared to the main branch.

The third category were clan affiliates or auxiliaries. Often illegitimate children born to a civilian or a non-related ninja such that it was unlikely that they unlocked the bloodline (if there was one), or were untrained in the secret arts of the clan. Affiliates who were successful as ninja frequently became concubines after reaching chunin, and in rare cases were married, most frequently by branch-members. A particularly successful affiliate might be adopted, normally by their birth parent, especially if they unlocked the bloodline through whatever circumstances.

The last category were clan retainers. This normally included any civilians that were part of the clan, as well as non-related ninja that serve it or its members for whatever reasons.

The cause of there being so many Affiliates was the Konoha policy on relationships; Konoha wanted the most successful shinobi to breed, and breed prodigiously. The village had only a few hundred jonin at any point in time, and it took the deaths of thousands of genin and chunin to get them. If there was anything in their genes that could be passed on to have more successful ninja in the future, then Konoha wanted it. This led to a number of seemingly odd but very logical practices.

Jonin were eligible to go to brothels with loyalty-screened employees for free, and could take them as concubines if desired. Jonin were allowed any number of wives and concubines, and got a tax-reduction or allowance (if retired) for every child. Chunin were encouraged to have at least one wife and one to three concubines, had access to the brothels at a relatively low rate, and were given slightly less generous allotments for any children. Even genin got marriage assistance and child-support.

Female ninja were encouraged to attempt to seduce superior-ranking male ninja (so long as they were out of their rank-structure or not on active deployment), and those that made chunin, especially if they might make jonin in the future, were encouraged to retire, or at least take a non-active posting, and have children. There were sperm and egg banks as well, of varying security levels, and citizens were encouraged to make use of them to the limit of their security clearance.

So, I hope that explains Konoha, the number of their ninja, and how they could survive their high levels of attrition. Note that none of this was cheap; in fact, ninja saw the vast majority of their funds going to the village, especially on missions higher than D-Rank.

That said, ninja lived well, and having all the chicks and children you wanted was typically a good reason not to go missing nin to avoid high taxes. In fact, chunin with little sex drive made up the majority of attempted defections; Konoha even tested for it as part of the routine psychological profiling.

In comparison, Uzushiogakure had very much lower combat casualties, partially due to a lower combat tempo, and partially due to having the luxury of greater resources for all ranks of soldier including things like a medical stasis seal for any soldier in the field in case of serious injury. Uzushio troops trained for longer, and had more access to specialist training than any other nation.

The main Uzushiogakure combat mission involved anti-piracy escorts and patrolling Whirlpool's territory. Whirlpool's ships were better built, better armed, better crewed and equipped with the latest in weapons development and seals. The only real threat was Kirigakure naval combat groups, and even still they would need to outnumber the Uzushio forces to have an advantage.

The ninja and samurai worked hand in hand with the National Guard and Militia, resulting in greater combat efficiency and fewer occasions of Samurai officers giving damaging orders to their ninja subordinates. Most years, Uzushio tended to suffer more losses due to injuries from training accidents or sailing itself than to actual combat.

So when an enthusiastic Jiraiya explained the concept of what were basically factories to breed ninja, it seemed very strange to me, and I suspected to Sachiko. Especially given my age. I resolved to apply a birth-control seal to both myself and Sachiko as soon as we returned to the Consulate, and place the strongest security seal possible over it. Soon enough, the tour ended. Jiraiya left, and when we returned, I applied the seals before retiring to bed.

Soon enough, I would be meeting the Kyubi. I would need my rest.

Chapter 19: Interlude 2: Uncomfortable Meetings (Sarutobi Hiruzen)

After the departure of the Uzushiogakure delegation, I just wanted to sigh. That had not gone at all as I was expecting.

"Thank you for your time tonight. I'll want to have a meeting with you tomorrow, Mitokado, Koharu. Say, 2 o'clock? Danzo, I'd like to see you in my office; we have some village business to discuss." I turned towards the Daimyo's representative. "Thank you for hosting our discussion, Yasu-sama."

"Not at all, Hokage-sama. It was very interesting." Ahhh… I just wanted to sigh again.

After arriving at my office I dismissed my security detail and put up the privacy seals. I sat down but pointedly did not offer Danzo a seat.

"What the hell was that?" I demanded.

His face didn't even twitch. "I apologize. I should never have let a child get under my skin like that."

"No, you damned well shouldn't have. We'll discuss that, and him, and the many intelligence failures later. You know what I'm talking about. Don't dodge the question."

"You know you're not meant to know what measures I take for Village security. That was our agreement when I formed Root," Danzo stonewalled.

I snarled. "Yes. That was the agreement BEFORE WE WERE SUSPECTED OF SPREADING PLAGUE TO AN ALLY!" I had lost it, flaring Killing Intent and shouting. "Explain yourself. Now, Jonin Shimura. Did we even do it?"

"We're not responsible." God. When had it gotten this bad? Even directly questioning him, I couldn't get a straight answer out of the twisted bastard.

"So why do they suspect us?" I asked as if he were a particularly unintelligent child.

"Likely because the infiltrators had seals to penetrate their sensor network and we pressed so hard for a new host for the Kyubi."

"Wait, what? How did they get seals capable of penetrating Uzushio's sensor network?"

The silence was damning.

"Gods above Danzo, how could you let this blow back on us! They probably suspect that it was Root that launched the attack!" I exclaimed.

"We needed a host. I did what was necessary. There's no proof I supplied the seals."

"No. Because Uzumaki trained sealers grow on trees, do they?" I asked rhetorically, sarcastically. "I'm surprised they didn't declare war."

"Against the wishes of Uzumaki Daichi from the looks of it. Why the hell would an eight year old have known about this?"

"Well he's clearly no ordinary eight year old. I think that's obvious. I never would have thought I'd see the day where a child managed to get such advantage over you. Your insult almost cost us our future Jinchuriki."

Danzo grimaced at the reminder. "At least we know what to expect now," he replied.

"They really pulled a fast one on us," I said. Honestly it was a pretty admirable political move, one I'd appreciate infinitely more if it wasn't aimed at Konoha. "I didn't expect it from Kazuo-dono. And the information we received from Mito-sama didn't even mention him as a possibility." What a fucking mess.

"Clearly her influence is far less than she would have us believe."

"But we've been basing all of our interactions on it." I hated this. I hated lacking information, being less informed than someone who was eight damned years old. It was an embarrassment. "What could they do, if they wanted to?" I asked Danzo. He was likely more informed than I.

"Well, it's likely from what Daichi said that they now have stocks of the disease, and have weaponized it," he answered with a grimace. "And their Sealing Department, well… there's a reason they are feared, even if I suspect there are many exaggerations."

"Danzo. This was a disaster. I just… *sighs* Let's discuss the other intelligence failures first." Obviously I'd have to bring Danzo to heel. This was just inexcusable. But changing the subject gave me time to consider how to manage that.

"You mean the fact that we didn't know we were getting an eight year old from a samurai family as both our Consul and future Jinchuriki?" he clarified.

"Yes. How the hell did our agents miss that?"

"I think because they weren't looking for it. Clearly the training will need to be improved."

"Clearly," I semi-mockingly deadpanned. "Do we know anything about him?"

"Other than what we learned tonight? No. He may be related to the Sea-Hawk Samurai. He was a Naval officer, though he's retired now. Very effective, very old-school samurai if I remember correctly."

"Well that's something. Now we just need to find out everything else."

"How do you intend to?" he asked. "We'll lose Mito-sama's contacts soon."

"No, Mito-sama's contacts are clearly unreliable. I think I'll just ask him."

"Of course," Danzo chuckled. "Where will you put him?"

"The Academy, I think. With his diplomatic status, and as someone who is 'indefinitely seconded' it's vital he makes bonds with the village. He's young; he may even forget his previous suspicions." But I sincerely doubted it.

"I doubt it. I think he is far more like me in that respect," Danzo voiced my concern.

"Danzo, let me make myself clear. You may, under no circumstances, act against him in any way. His protection, and Uzushiogakure's protection, have by necessity become our greatest priorities. When word reaches the court of our discussion… we need to go above and beyond."

"I could have the representative removed from play."

"Are you fucking insane! Daichi is likely in contact with his embassy. If he heard of that, he would certainly ensure that the Daimyo heard of his suspicions, both about the plague and about the representative's death."

"It was just a possibility."

"No. In fact, double the guard on him. If he even had an accident… that's the last thing we need right now. And post a guard on Daichi and the rest of his mission."

"Of course."

"Good. Now, Danzo… this can't be without consequences. From now on, I expect a weekly or daily update on planned Root operations as appropriate to their timing. Further, you will undertake no mission involving the destabilization of a foreign power without permission. Is that understood?" This, this I expected a fight on. Danzo had always itched at the thought of even light oversight, and this was heavy.

"Hiruzen! You can't be serious. You know your own limitations, why Root is needed and why I need to run it! You've always been too moral to do what's truly necessary." That. Disrespectful. Little. Fuck.

"Jonin-Captain Shimura Danzo, you forget yourself!" I roared, standing up and putting my finger in his face. "I am your HOKAGE, damn you! You serve at my wishes, and if you've forgotten that fact I'll accept your retirement. There's a reason Sensei picked me as his successor. You lack something. It makes you a wonderful weapon, but you've begun to cut indiscriminately. I will be wielding you directly. Is that understood!"

At some point in my tirade he had come to a formal kneeling salute. "Yes, Hokage-sama!"

I sat down in my seat. "Good. I'll expect the first update on Root in person tomorrow, and weekly updates from those watching over Daichi. Dismissed."

Danzo wasted no time leaving. As I sat back in my chair, and pulled out a flask of sake from a drawer, I wondered when things had gotten this bad.

But whatever the answer, I knew I was getting too old for this shit.

Chapter 20: Back to School

On the third day after "Danzo's Teatime Smack-down" we re-sealed Kyubi. I had no desire to speak to Mito, and so was in "contemplative isolation in preparation of receiving the Kyubi" basically as soon as Jiraiya's tour ended. It wasn't just an excuse; I actually did do some contemplation. I modified my memory-palace, as I assumed that would end up being my mind-scape, so that there would be a large wooded space leading up to the beach and ocean so that Kyubi might be comfortable.

The sealing itself was something of a disappointment; sure, it involved three high ranked specialist priests, one of whom was the second most senior Sealer period, but it didn't live up to my expectations. Why, you ask? Well, because whatever the transfer did, Kyubi was in a deep sleep afterward. I left a message on the wall of the fence keeping him enclosed, telling him to give a shout when he was awake, and then came out of my meditation. Mito was dead, and the party of Sealers and their escorts returned to Uzushiogakure.

Two weeks after Sachiko and I finished getting settled, school began. It was very weird being back in an organized, structured school, as it had been decades since I had completed my Masters of Engineering. It didn't help that I was expected to introduce myself in most of my classes.

I had something of an irregular schedule, taking many advanced electives as well as some general requirements like field-craft (outdoors), field-craft (urban), emergency medicine (basic), ninja tools (basic) and the like. There were enough advanced electives covering either higher levels of the basics, or more specialized skills like genjutsu (illusions) or Advanced Movement without Chakra (parkour), that I would be able to just stretch my studies out to the full four years possible, though to do so I needed to claim Independent Credits in Clan Required Studies for Sealing, Whirlpool-Fist and Sword, and my own personal diplomatic duties.

The advanced classes were typically full of eleven and twelve year olds, with the exception of the rare genius or clan-born specialist, and I while I was entering at the beginning of a new term, it was still mid-year and none of these brats had met me before. Sachiko looked suitably old, but I looked a bit odd, and so our introductions had a high level of attention even before we started speaking. I'll relate how the first introduction went. The others were not so different that they need telling. The class was Advanced Battlefield Presence, which taught both basic Killing Intent as well as how to counter it, and gave an introduction to similar proto-genjutsu auras.

So there I was, standing at the front of the class in a training outfit, which was basically a scaled-down Uzumaki combat-sealer uniform with some slits to push chains through, wearing my oversized swords (which I was finally not bumping things with). Sachiko stood behind my shoulder, and wore an outfit based on the female Clan-guard's uniform, though it did include my device to show her allegiance. And all these fucking brats were staring at us. More specifically at me. Except for a few boys who were staring at Sachiko and had thus already announced their desire to "spar" with me.

"So, why don't you introduce yourself?" Hmm… I thought I how I should, then decided to play up the samurai angle.

"Yosh! I am Recruit-Sergeant Uzumaki Daichi of Whirlpool's Militia. I have been seconded to Konohagakure's service indefinitely as part of a diplomatic program; you may address me as Daichi-san or Daichi-kun as appropriate, as there were many Uzumaki at home and things got confusing otherwise. If, however, you see me in formal clothing, then I am likely fulfilling my duties as Junior Baron Courtier of the Fifth Rank and Assistant to the Ambassador to the Fire Daimyo's court, Consul to Konohagakure Uzumaki Daichi. Please watch over me." As I finished, I lightly bowed to the somewhat stunned room. It was a very samurai greeting; all about what my role and duties and title were, but nothing about me as a person. The teacher sighed.

"Daichi-kun, why not tell them something about yourself. What you like, dislike, and your goals, for example?"

"Ah," I nodded. "My name is Uzumaki Daichi. I am eight years old. I like Uzushiogakure, training with my family and tutors, and learning about seals. I dislike those that threaten Uzushiogakure. My goals are to learn ninja skills at this academy, and bring honor to my Lord, my village, and my family." There. I think that should set the right tone.

"Good. And now, Hisakawa-chan, would you care to do the same?"

"Yes. My name is Hisakawa Sachiko. I am Daichi-sama's retainer, as my family are retainers to his Ojii-sama. I too like Uzushiogakure, and training with my family, as well as serving Daichi-sama," dammit, Sachiko, you totally did that double-meaning on purpose. I guessed she felt like my sensing was adequate to her concealment of amusement. She continued over the faint whispers. "I dislike those that threaten Daichi-sama or his interests. My goals are to become an excellent retainer and serve my master." Yep. Definitely on purpose. Maybe she wanted me to have rivals to push my progress? Or was using me to shield herself from them. Or laying claim against the other females to protect me. Actually, with her, it was likely the last of those options.

I guess the teacher didn't think that he could keep everyone calm after that without some questions being answered, and so opened up the floor to questioners.

"Daichi-san, are you a samurai?" from a somewhat weak-looking girl with the indication of being a clan-affiliate.

"This one has the honor of such a title," I replied half-jokingly in ultra-formal language. It also didn't exactly answer the question. I was a samurai, but that was only a fraction of my being, and I always preferred honesty.

"How are you only eight and yet the Consul to the village?" from a slightly jealous looking scruffy boy with brown hair wearing a green jacket.

"I would not presume to speak for my Lord's decisions." Better than "classified", but still kid, what the fuck were you expecting?

"Sachiko-chan, are you dating anyone?" His face I would definitely remember. The cocky little shit was in a fancy outfit and bore the symbol of one of the richer clans that straddled the line between ninja and merchant. I wasn't sure if I'd beat him, or cripple him to make a point, but he'd definitely made the list.

"No. My duties do not give me the time." Nice shutdown, Sachiko.

"Daichi-kun, are you dating anyone?" This from a girl in a pretty outfit. Gods, what did they feed these brats to make them like this? We all just met each other, kiddies. Give it an hour maybe?

"No. I'm eight. And we don't know each other well enough for you to call me '-kun' yet." I'm fairly sure I had started to emit a bit of spiritual pressure myself, and so the instructor decided to call a stop to things and a move-on with the class.

The Academy went well. Those first six months, I mostly caught up on the basic field-survival I had missed out on (easily solved via judicious use of photographic memory of edible versus poisonous plants and wilderness survival techniques) as well as Konohagakure history and standard operating procedures and communication conventions like their battle-signing. It wasn't much fun, but was necessary; in later semesters I'd be able to do more interesting classes, as these basically ended the requirements I'd need to integrate into a Konoha unit.

The only top-tier elective class I was taking was actually that one on Advanced Battlefield Presence, and it was very interesting. Basically, Presence, which included Killing Intent, took advantage of sympathetic resonance transfer in chakra. By flaring your chakra presence, in effect making the pressure of your chakra available to notice, you could add some emotion or sensation that would be transferred to your enemies. Your own confidence in their destruction, or the certainty you'd kill them painfully was a favorite. You could also help out allies, though that was more practiced by samurai commanders to improve troop morale, by flaring chakra and filling them with the sensation of inevitable victory while demotivating enemy troops.

The interesting thing about the Presence was that it differentiated between enemies and allies. Those that identified themselves as being "on your side" would be often be buoyed up by the technique, while those opposing would be filled negatively affected. It mostly gave you the presence of whatever it was you were flaring, making you a conceptual representation of it to the eyes of those effected. I imagined that greater beings like minor Kami would use something similar, but on a greater order of magnitude when they took up their Aspect; at a strong enough level, the world, or at least the world's chakra, might identify you as having authority over whatever your Presence was associated with.

I proved to be something of a monster with my custom version of killing intent. The first time I used it at a reduced setting, and still knocked out the majority of the class (including the instructor). After that I got some serious sideways looks, and was banned on experimenting on the other students using aggressive Presences. Even Sachiko was left shivering for hours after.

The reason I was so overpowered was that the effect of the Presence depended on three things. First, intensity of chakra flair, particularly the spiritual energy you had. Second, the skill of applying the Presence. Third, the intensity of the experience used to power it. Range depended most on skill, second on intensity of chakra. But the effect, effect depended most on driving experience, then on intensity multiplied by a factor depending on skill. And my driving experience was brutal.

It was well known that people like combat-experienced jonin could make the "best" killing intent. They had experienced the closeness of death, and had dealt enough of it to be familiar. Straight up psychos were pretty good at it too. But I, I had passed through Death and remembered it. Granted the memories weren't great.

So when I subjected those unfamiliar with it to the sheer presence of the Void, it tended to overload their mind, and do a forced reset. This left a remaining existential dread behind even after I stopped the technique. I was told not to use my power without first preparing any nearby allies, and a note was put into my file strongly suggesting Killing Intent Tolerance training for any future team-mates of mine. Sachiko forced me to practice at home until she could stay combat effective despite the aura, and didn't sleep well for weeks.

The assistant instructor started to teach me about the subtler uses of Presence. While at a gross level Presence could be used as indiscriminate Killing Intent, there were two ways that it could be refined. The first was in skill of applying the Presence; there were ways to focus it to only affect certain people or spaces. The second was in the types of Presence you could project. While I had good chakra control in general, and amazing control considering my absolutely huge reserves, I still had problems with limiting the area of effect, especially at longer ranges. So, while I could limit range, and within about ten or fifteen feet apply it only to those I wanted to, I couldn't show that kind of refined targeting during combat.

But applying different Presences was something I proved extremely skilled at, especially within the focus of "Presences which are part of my identity." To do that, all I really had to do was focus for a moment on a facet of my personality, and draw that forward. This was similar to relatively basic levels of meditation I had long since mastered, and so I quickly became capable of focusing certain aspects of my personality and projecting them as a Presence.

It was particularly useful for social situations, since I could use minor chakra flaring to establish a Presence at interpersonal ranges. I could even fill myself with my own identity as a whole, something I knew so well from my mind/soul-binding, and make other people understand me better and faster. This too I practiced with Sachiko so that we'd be a more effective team. Her eyes were a bit wider around me for a while as she adapted, but she eventually acted normally again; it did succeed in making her a bit less formal and more comfortable around me, so I counted it as a success.

Overall, although the Presence Projection techniques were relatively minor, I managed to take them to a truly effective level, and they were effectively free to use in life and battle.

The semester ended, and I looked forward to a short, relaxing break. Sadly, it proved to be very busy.

Chapter 21: No Rest for the Wicked

During the break following the end of that first semester was the only truly major occurrence of my Academy years, but what a major occurrence it was.

It started off a lazy Wednesday at the end of spring, just at the start of summer. I had thought of the idea of having Ramen at Teuchi's, as it was Naruto's favorite joint and, well, I felt like it. Being a relatively powerful noble, that was really all the justification I needed. But Konoha was a big place, and I had no idea if it even existed at that point.

So, rather than look for it, I had Sachiko do so. I cannot recommend having competent minions enough; 10/10 would hire again. I told her that I had once heard about "the best Ramen restaurant in the World" from a traveler in Uzushio, and that the owner, or perhaps his son, was called Teuchi. Sachiko found the place in a couple days.

We were on the way when the emergency communications seal I wore on a wristband heated up. I told Sachiko, and we ran at full speed back to the Consulate.

I immediately joined Ichirou-san in the communications room, then sealed it and activated privacy protections. On the video-seal was an image of the same Council meeting room where we had discussed the epidemic nearly a year ago. A few people were still trickling in, but within a few minutes Kazuo-sama had called the room to order.

"As of two days ago, surveillance flights over Kirigakure's fleet as well as more cursory inspection of ports in Lightning have shown increased activity. Military readiness was raised. As of an hour ago, a large fleet consisting of Lightning and Water origin ships have rendezvoused near the North-Western Island of Water-country, about 400 miles away from our shores." He pointed to a map on a stand.

Oh my god. It was war.

Spoiler: "Map"

"A number of the ships from the Land of Lightening are bearing Iwagakure flags. Others bear the flags of Iwa or Kumo vassals. We plan on meeting the enemy near here, about two hundred miles from Uzushiogakure in two days' time. The main battle fleet will consist of the Flagship Spirit of Uzushiogakure, eight Naval Escorts and twenty Patrol Craft. Other fleet elements will be patrolling our waters in case of a sneak attack from a different direction. Three waves, each with a hundred and fifty Pelicans will be dispatched, one hour apart from each other, as will the Custom Pelican Wing."

Holy shit. That was a lot of fire-power. A standard Patrol-Craft at the time had a broadside of two Cyclone-Bullet Seal turrets and a Cycle-Cannon Seal turret, for a total of four Bullet seals and two Cannon seals. The turrets were fully reticulated, and could fire in most any direction; all Uzushio ships were capable of forward firing chase configurations. An Escort had eight dual-purpose turrets with a Cannon-Seal and a co-axial Bullet Seal. The Spirit of Uzushiogakure was even more impressive. A testbed of advanced and prototype seals, it was capable of things that most people, myself included, were totally unaware of, and probably beyond our expectations. Beyond that, it had sixteen dual-purpose turrets, and likely carried a far higher proportion of more advanced and more destructive seals applied to the shells in the cannon magazines.

With a rate of fire of 2,500 rounds a minute for the Bullet Seals and 250 rounds a minute for the Cannon Seals, as well as a minimum ammunition allotment sufficient to keep up that rate of fire for at least ten minutes continuous combat, our fleet would be able to lay down millions of bullets and hundreds of thousands of cannon rounds without the Pelicans being taken into account. Kazuo-sama continued to lay out the plan.

"The fleet will arrange itself ready to fire over the horizon, using targeting information fed into the sealing network from the Pelican surveillance flight. When the enemy ships are within nineteen kilometers of the fleet, the attack will begin.

"The enemy ships are currently arranged with the Kirigakure war-ships in front, smaller groups of fast-moving ships on the flanks, and the bulk of their transports in the protected pocket that they form. Wings of thirty Pelicans each will simultaneously strike each group, focusing on damaging sails and oars to limit mobility, as well as deploying underwater hunter-seekers to prevent ninja fleeing through the water or by water-walking. After the first pass, the Pelicans will draw back and reform.

"While the Pelicans reform, the ships will begin bombardment. After approximately five minutes, they will cease fire, allowing the Pelican Wings to strike again. The thirty reserve Pelicans will chase down any runners. The Custom Pelican Wing will attack particularly fierce enemy resistance, and deal with any Jinchuriki or special challenges that are with the fleet.

"Should the initial assault prove insufficient, the fleet will continue to harry the enemy armada, and subsequent Pelican Waves will concentrate on the remainder. This will continue until all enemies are dead and all ships sunk. Overflights will search for enemy survivors for a week following the operation.

"Following this, I believe it is time to capture Water-Country. They have been a threat long enough. Five days after the battle, I intend to raze Kirigakure with massed air-assault. We will use our treaties to request aid from Fire and Konohagakure, and see what we can achieve.

"Ambassador Hato. We trust you will be able to contact the Fire Daimyo? Ask for troops; explain that we have a confirmed force of between eight and twelve thousand ninja incoming, and that we expect the war to last some years if the initial assault is repulsed. You may offer the majority of seized treasures; we are interested in the land and people, but they will not believe us capable of holding the land. Ensure we have operational command, and can prevent too many excesses from being taken.

"Consul Daichi. Get troops from Konohagakure. Ichirou, accompany him. Promise that we will forget any actions they may have had a part of; that move was well timed for this situation. Tell them that if they send at least a thousand ninja that you will not be recalled; we expect that the Daimyo will send many of the ninja attached to his forces. Also, you are expected to participate as part of the Custom Pelican Wing; your grandfather reported your Pelican is prepared.

"Commander Sho. Pass orders to our agents; make it known that we are recruiting samurai, ninja and soldiers, and that service will be rewarded, possibly with titles and land.

"Very well. You have your orders; get to it. Let us make history. Hato, Daichi, make sure to leave a servant in the communications center to pass messages. Dismissed."

I turned off the sound transmission from our end. One of the servants assigned to the Consulate settled in.

"Sachiko. Help me get dressed."

Soon enough I was dressed and waiting in the Hokage's tower with a message of the "utmost severity" for the Hokage. Within half an hour we were shown in and saw the Hokage with the Jonin Commander, one of the highest ranking officers of the village, present.

"Hokage-sama. Kazuo-dono sends me with warning that a fleet of eight to twelve thousand ninja is on its way to Uzushiogakure. The fleet left from Lightning country and flies flags from Iwagakure, Kumogakure, and appears to be led by Kirigakure naval assets. If left unchallenged, they are expected to arrive in five days; our fleet will make contact in two, and attempt to destroy them, or at least hamper their progress. Kazuo-dono is requesting that Konohagakure provide ninja as per our treaty. Ambassador Hato is making a similar request for troops from the Daimyo for the following conflict, assuming we survive the initial assault."

I allowed myself to project the frisson of worry that I was feeling (not that the Hokage needed to know it was about how my babies would perform in battle), and the determination for Uzushiogakure to survive. The Hokage's eyes had gotten wide as he heard of this attack.

"We received no word of this. How good is the intelligence?" the Jonin Commander asked.

"Impeccable. We have real-time information, using a set of fairly complicated seals." He had no need to know about the aerial assets, one of the "holy grails" of the ninja world, especially not before negotiating how many ninja he would be sending. "Chakra-signature scans are indicative of a force of that size, and it is supported by images and the size of their fleet."

"And under what terms do you request Konohagakure's ninja?" Let the dickering begin.

"We request Konohagakure's ninja to reinforce our defenses, so long as the village has not already been razed. We request Konohagakure's ninja to continue to support our forces, whether deployed within Whirlpool's territory, at sea, or in operations within Water Country, until the end of this conflict, not to exceed five years. Ninja will draw standard combat pay and spoils as laid out in our original treaty of fellowship, and the initial number may be drawn down at the agreement of both Konohagakure and Uzushiogakure." The Hokage nodded. That had been about what he was expecting.

"And how many ninja are you requesting?"

"I would like 3,000 combat and infiltration capable ninja, with at most 1,000 being drawn from the combat reserves, and at least 1,000 drawn from the so called "elite" forces." At this the Jonin Commander sucked in his breath. That was at least half their active mercenary forces, and a lot of combat capable ninja, especially if it drew them into conflict with Iwa and Kumo at the same time. An expansion would increase the number of fronts Konohagakure had to fight on, and thus stress their available personnel.

Before the Jonin Commander could say anything though, I let my eyes flicker away from the Hokage and to him and continued. "So long as there are at least two thousand combat ninja, with at least half coming from the elite forces, drawn proportionally at the levels of jonin and chunin, I have been told that Kazuo-dono will forgive any recent irregularities and suspicions. So long as at least a thousand combat ninja are provided, I will not be recalled."

I was asking for a load more ninja than I needed to, more ninja than the Hokage would provide unless Danzo had confirmed some sort of involvement with the failed epidemic. Let's see if he was suspecting such a subtle ploy from an eight year old who just found out that his home was being invaded by what should have been overwhelming force.

The Hokage thought for a moment before nodding.

"I will provide twenty eight hundred ninja. Twelve hundred drawn from the elite. Another eight hundred experienced combat veterans from the reserves suitable to ship-board combat and jutsu support for regular military units. Three hundred trained in infiltration. And five hundred that specialize in logistics to help keep them properly supplied. We want Uzushiogakure to know how much we value our positive relations. They will be available for up to five years."

Translation: Danzo fucked up. And in return we had about a seventh of Konoha's troops, including over half of their very best, for up to five years. Hell yes. Kazuo-sama would be ecstatic. I knew the Jonin Commander was somewhat puzzled, and needed to organize deployment orders; it was time to leave, and report back.

"Thank you very much, Hokage-sama. Uzushiogakure is deeply honored and grateful for the depth of Konohagakure's loyalty, and stands in awe of your Will of Fire." Words were cheap, but I wanted it clear that I valued his contribution, and understood that he'd had nothing to do with the situation. I'd have to deactivate the dead-man's switch on Project Thor. "I will have Sachiko return immediately with a set of communications seals so your commanders may speak with their counterparts. May I ask when we might expect the first elements of your troops?"

"We will dispatch the first five hundred from the village guard by this afternoon. Would you be willing to give a brief speech and announcement with me, when they depart?" he answered after a moment of thought.

"I would be honored, Hokage-sama."

"Excellent. I will send one of my ANBU when it is time."

"Thank you, Hokage-sama. I will leave you to your preparations, and report this happy news to Kazuo-dono." I bowed, and left Sarutobi to explain exactly why Konoha needed to send so many of its troops to what seemed to be shaping up to be a serious cluster-fuck.

Ninja weren't used to fighting in such a high density, and when they did, casualties tended to be extremely high, with a greater than normal amount occurring in the higher ranks. While a jonin might be able to beat a trio of genin a hundred times in a hundred days, the back to back fighting could drain chakra and result in death. That was basically every ninja's nightmare; trapped in a meatgrinder, with no ability to use the subtle skills they spent so long training.

I sure as fuck wasn't going to explain that we actually expected to crush the invasion, and then invade ourselves, and thus be using the ninja the way they were meant to be; they'd send far fewer troops. While the terms of Alliance meant we'd be paying the standard pay and death benefits for their ninja, it wasn't overly generous, and probably wouldn't have been sufficient to make up for the Village's deficit if there were large losses among the Konohagakure jonin.

"Wait until we're back at the Consulate, Ichirou-san. I need to think a moment." Ichirou nodded in confirmation.

After a moment's pause I continued. "Sachiko, as soon as we return, take a stack of personal voice-communication seals. Show the Hokage how to indicate the identity of the user, and get them in communication with Command, then hang about to provide assistance as needed. I suspect I'll be spending the rest of the time up until the speech, and probably the battle, providing last minute advice about Pelican piloting and listening to the military officers."

"Yes, Daichi-sama," she replied.

After we returned to the Consulate and were in the secured communications room, I answered Ichirou's obvious question while waiting for Kazuo-sama to finish his conversation with the Fleet Admiral.

"You're wondering how I managed to get so many ninja assigned to us," I remarked. "You remember our first meeting here, the tea and Danzo? I wouldn't have managed so many ninja if it weren't for guilt. So, Danzo's involvement in the epidemic is effectively confirmed."

"Gods. What are we going to do?" he asked stunned. He focused on trade, not this sort of thing.

I smiled bitterly. "Nothing. They just made reparations for it, after all. Right now we need troops more than righteous anger."

"Incredible. I understand why I was appointed your deputy."

"You flatter me, Ichirou-san. You were appointed here for your unparalleled understanding of politics as it relates to trade. Had it not been for this invasion, I would be useless. Anyway, it is time to inform Kazuo-dono," I said as I noticed an attendant directing Kazuo-sama's attention our way.

"Kazuo-dono. I have returned from negotiations with the Hokage," I began, as he faced the communicator array.

"And?"

"Konohagakure will provide twenty eight hundred ninja. Twelve hundred drawn from the elite. Another eight hundred experienced combat veterans from the reserves suitable to ship-board combat and jutsu support for regular military units. Three hundred trained in infiltration. And five hundred that specialize in logistics to help keep them properly supplied. They want Uzushiogakure to know how much we value our positive relations. They will be available for up to five years, under standard payment as laid out by the terms for Joint-Operation included in our original alliance agreement. Sachiko, my retainer, is giving them communications seals to get in contact with our commanders right now."

"So you were correct." It seemed as though Kazuo-sama didn't know whether he should be pissed off at Konohagakure's involvement in such an underhanded attack on our home, or happy that the relatively tiny loss of life resulted in thousands of extra top-quality ninja for our upcoming war.

I nodded in reply. "It would seem so. For what it's worth, I truly believe the Hokage innocent. Danzo I suspect was the culprit. But that is behind us now."

"Quite. Very good job, regardless. That's at least twice as many ninja as I was expecting. Depending on how your ideas perform during their first large-scale combat test, I will likely have to revisit your rank."

"Thank you, Kazuo-dono, but I am unworthy." He gave a small snort at this.

"Please, Daichi-san. You are more than worthy, and laid the groundwork for this situation perfectly. I am well pleased with your performance. You too, Ichirou-san."

"Thank you, my Lord," we replied.

"I need to continue with our preparations. Was there anything else?"

"Ah, yes, Kazuo-dono. Konohagakure is still unaware of the full capacity of our Pelicans and the Cyclone Seals. They expect to defend the Islands from an assault; I recommend that we tell them we were unsure of the weapons systems, and wanted to err on the side of caution. Following the glorious victory, if your troops do prove successful that is, we decided to end the problem once and for all."

"That makes sense. Good luck with your preparations."

"You as well, Lord."

Chapter 22: Cognomen

That afternoon, I watched as the Hokage gave a masterful performance, layering his Presence through his speech, building the forces up and improving their morale. Then, it was my turn. I stepped out, used a voice-amplification jutsu, and unleashed the full might of my chakra.

An eight year old was not that impressive, even if they were dressed in an impeccable robe. An eight year old with the chakra of a Kage? That was different. Kages weren't really human. I wasn't a kid, not that day. I was minor god of destruction that looked like one. And a visceral level, they knew it.

I didn't have the subtlety of the Hokage. Uzushiogakure didn't have the subtlety of Konohagakure, to be honest. So I showed them what we did have. Raw, naked, beautiful power.

"People of Konohagakure, I am Uzumaki Daichi, Consul to your great city. I look out on this mighty force assembled, and I feel shame and jealousy." I projected those emotions, and bowed my head a bit, waiting until they just started to become uncomfortable.

"I am shamed that I cannot join you," I continued, "and jealous that you will get to face the curs that call themselves Kiri, Kumo, Iwa." Now I was projecting disgust and contempt towards those peoples who would face us.

I let that sink in for a short moment before continuing.

"Kiri, Kumo and Iwa," I intoned again, raising the level of contempt. "They are not like us. They are not like the prosperous sailors of Wave and Uzushiogakure. They are not like the noble, hardworking citizens of this beautiful Village in the Leaves, burning bright with the Will of Fire. They do not have any great friendship, like that between our great peoples." As I spoke I was projecting pride and love for home.

"And these dogs are jealous. We all know this, that they are jealous. It is easy to understand; they have much to be jealous of, do they not?" I waited for the crowd to roar assent. "But rather than be noble and improve themselves, as we have worked so hard to do, they act like pigs that wish the whole world were filth." I layer in yet more contempt for the enemy.

"And so they try and attack Uzushiogakure, for being what they are not - for being friends with Konohagakure!" I allowed the crowd to erupt into boos. "And in time, if ever they are able, they will attack Konohagakure, and bring war and ruin to you and your families." My voice was softer now, drawing them in. Then, quickly, I ramped up the emotions again, filling the crowd with rage, the urge to destroy these vermin, to wipe them from the earth and salt the land they once had, mixed with that patriotic love for the home and family and country.

"But, my friends! You will not allow this, will you!" A roar of 'NO!'.

"You will not allow these dogs any victory." I whipped the crowd with energy, action, exultation, feeding the emotions I was feeling back to them.

"And together, Whirlpool and the Leaf are INVINCIBLE. We will meet them. And. They. Will. BE. DESTROYED!" Full of the sensation of inevitable victory, the crowd was in a frenzy, and so I motioned for them to quiet for a moment, using my Presence to enforce it.

"So, Sons and Daughters of Konohagakure, go with my thanks, my adulation, and yes, even my jealousy," I said as I filled them with the pride I had in Uzushiogakure's military, my father, keeping my family and people safe.

"Go, Sons and Daughters of Konohagakure, and EXULT! FOR YOU WILL HAVE A GLORIOUS KILLING! FOR THE HOKAGE! FOR KONOHAGAKURE! FOR THE ALLIANCE!"

Having filled them with a sense of victory and my own satisfaction at a well given speech, I bowed low, like I might to my lord, and held it for almost a minute as their commanders gave orders to get the ninja marching while the rest of the crowd went nuts chanting "The Alliance! The Alliance!" Then I straightened and turned to the Hokage who had partially blocked the noise using a wind jutsu.

"That was the first speech you've ever given, wasn't it," he half asked, half commented.

"Was it that apparent, Hokage-sama?" I asked, worried that I might have fucked it up. He chuckled and shook his head.

"No, not at all. You know, one day, you'll do something ridiculous like this, and I'll be so used to it I won't even be surprised."

I grinned cheekily. "I hope not, Hokage-sama. If I became predictable, I wouldn't be nearly so interesting. And what is life without some interesting people in it? Boring. I would never wish such a thing on you, Hokage-sama." He laughed a bit at that.

"I could do with a bit of boredom, occasionally, but perhaps you are right. You know, Daichi, it is a shame you were not born a citizen of Konohagakure. Had you been, I think I would be able to rest easy in the selection of my successor."

"You flatter me too much, Hokage-sama."

"No, I don't think I do," he mused. "But, now to business. I need to continue to organize the rest of the troops, and begin sending them out in companies," he spoke as a gaggle of upper ranked figures arrived.

"Ah, I will leave you to it, Hokage-sama, with my thanks for your efforts. Goodnight, sir." I bowed, received his nod, and left, deciding to check in with Sachiko before heading back to the Consulate.

"Ah, Sachiko! How are things going?" I asked when I found her at the edge of a room with a number of busy chunin and jonin.

"Very well, Daichi-sama. Daichi-sama, may I ask you a question?" she asked with face that was equal parts serious and worried-puppy.

"You just did, Sachiko, but yes, you know I've told you to ask me and to tell me whatever you want to." I was very interested; this was unusual behavior for the normally quite proper (at least as far as you could tell) Sachiko.

"Daichi-sama, are you actually human? You're not a god, right?" I burst into laughter. She asked so seriously, so I decided to answer.

"No, I am a human, Sachiko. At least as far as I am aware, I am simply a person who loves life more than most, and so life loves me more than most. Or perhaps it is the other way around, or a circle that reinforces itself, neh?" I replied with a smile to her faint confusion as she parsed my statement.

I patted her on the back, too short to easily reach her shoulder. "Anyways, Sachiko, don't work too hard! I need to go back and consult with Hikaru jii-san about my Pelican and preparations for the counter-attack. I trust you'll come back and get some food and sleep, ok? There was a great King who once said that Hunger and Exhaustion were the Enemy. I expect you to defeat them properly," I ordered mock seriously.

"Understood, Daichi-sama," she replied, eyes searching my face for some hidden secret. I just smiled warmly, innocently at her in return. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight, Sachiko." With that, I left for the Consulate and more preparations.

The day of the attack dawned bright and clear, with a light wind. Perfect for Pelicans. As it reached around ten am, my Pelican was in position at the holding station about fifty kilometers away from the target. I was part of the Custom Pelican Wing. Off to the side, I had a video-seal that I was using to look at a surveillance feed from an oversight recon Pelican. I could see both the enemy and allied ships, and another feed of the map showed color-coded markers for all the ships and Pelican Wings in the area.

Sachiko stood behind me, watching; she still hadn't qualified on a Pelican, and I told her to remind me about getting that done soon. Ichirou wasn't even qualified to be present. I had sent one of the servants as a messenger to the Hokage's officers, and would be sending other reports as updates came in.

The time felt like it was dragging out forever, and I had the thought that this, today, would likely be the day that I killed my first man. I had tried with Hammer of God, but failed. This time, there would be no failure. I checked the Pelican's chakra levels again, then used a transmission seal to top it off. It was inefficient, sure, but it at least gave me something to do, and it couldn't hurt. Right as I finished, I heard a message from Kazuo-sama on the communicator.

"This is Uzumaki Kazuo, Lord of Whirlpool and Uzushiogakure. Today, we face enemies that would destroy us. Today, we will send them to the hells where they belong, and ensure our safety for generations. Launch the operation, and may the Gods look on with favor." Maybe not that epic, but true words nonetheless.

A different voice, Hikaru jii-san's, reminded the Wing not to launch a strike before ordered. He had ended up in command of our Custom Pelican Wing based partially on his victory in the Pelican Tournament (using my air-to-air rounds), his own seniority within the Sealing Department (said department being responsible for all the Custom Pelicans in the wing, and whose members either piloted them themselves or had their retinue members do so), and partially because he had been the original advocate for aerial combat and drones.

I watched on the tactical map as the four strike Wings of the first wave approached the enemy fleet, then watched on the surveillance feed as the Pelicans opened fire.

It was amazing.

It was like watching a computer game, or the destruction of a petulant child's toys. The ships may as well have been sitting still as dozens of Pelicans strafed them, firing bullets and cannon rounds as they closed. I saw Pelicans dropping the underwater hunter-seekers while sails caught fire, masts collapsed, and people were cut down like wheat before an automatic harvester. I couldn't even imagine the carnage of what was effectively heavy machine-gun fire on a crowded warship, let alone the transports. It must have been hell though.

For the most part, the Pelicans were using the standard bullets mixed with elementally infused rounds, and heavy-explosive and cannister shells from the cannon-seals. All of these chewed through the ships' hulls like paper and inflicted horrendous casualties. But every now and then a pilot would be using something a bit more special.

One of the most visually stunning was a pilot who must have spent a fantastic amount of chakra on Star-burst seals. Somewhat similar to the Dragon's Breath seals I had made for my first fireworks show, the Star-burst fired off six Dragon's Breath with 90 degrees between each plume of brutally hot flame, shaped like an octahedron. Not content with that though, the Star-burst seal spun, filling a space forty feet wide with a whirling dervish of fiery destruction. A brutal weapon, but one that was quite beautiful to watch, it was designed to immolate ships and proved its worth.

Although not having as many cannon rounds equipped as other pilots, the Star-burst Pelican's pilot managed to catch a group of half a dozen transports and in a display of aerial efficiency, hit each as he passed. I doubt there were any survivors. This was just a small part of the pattern of destruction that enveloped the hundred-odd enemy ships.

This aerial attack, something that did so much damage, lasted less than a minute. It was surreal. As the Pelicans withdrew, some headed for base due to having expended all their ammunition already, I could see the people like ants running about on the ships, trying to put out fires and cut off wreckage to make the ships sea-worthy again. And then a minute later, while all that confusion had just gotten properly underway, I heard the report that the Pelicans were outside of the firing zone. Our Naval Fleet opened fire, and twenty seconds later the rounds began to impact.

If the Pelicans were destruction on quick wings, the Fleet was a remote rain of death, a miniature Armageddon. Each ship dropped thousands of rounds on the enemy every minute, chewing through hulls and the panicked shield jutsu that most ships presented. And unlike the Pelicans, this fire just did not let up.

As thirty seconds turned into a minute turned into three and then five, there were only a few ships remaining that weren't totally destroyed or burning to the waterline. Some few ninja attempted to escape overboard; we could not see the bodies of those underwater, but the ones running would only get a few dozen steps before a hunter-seeker caught them if the storm of bullets failes. The near-total destruction made sense; I estimated that the Fleet had dropped over a million .50 caliber bullets, a fifth of them infused with an element, and at least seventy-five thousand seals of variable payload from the cannon-seals.

But some very few ships did manage to survive. Here, there was one from Kumo surrounded by a miniature storm strong enough to blow away the testing bursts that kept up the pressure. There, one from Kirigakure surrounded by a massive shield of water. A ship from Iwa was guarded by a phalanx of earthen shields. Another, I think from some vassal-village, had mercifully escaped being targeted as they had cunningly fashioned a smoke-screen with the fumes of its burning brethren. But this, survivors, was not our goal no matter how worthy they had proved themselves in this holocaust. We wanted total destruction, as warning and propaganda.

And so we loosed our mightiest weapon; the Custom Pelican Wing that had been lavished with attention from our Seal-masters.

Five Pelicans were assigned to each of the surviving ships. My own group targeted the ship protected by the storm. If there was anything more impressive than the unleashed destruction of an expert Sealer, it was the unleashed destruction of five, all at the same time.

I'm not sure if it was the combination of awesome firepower, or some sort of seals interaction. I know that I had launched rounds that should have made a vicious firestorm large enough to cover a football field. And that was not what happened. As we five unloaded at that one ship, I noticed flashes from within the storm, and a moment later, a column of water a hundred feet tall exploded out of the sea. What was strangest though, was that it was glowing pink. I asked over the communicators if anyone was taking credit, but no one did, and we chalked it up to mystery.

As I leveled my Pelican out after the attack run, I glanced over at the surveillance feed to see how the others were faring. Another two targets had already been taken out, and as I watched, the fourth of the remaining ships, protected by the phalanx of Earth-Shields, was hit by a single seal of Hikaru jii-san's. A weapon he called it the gravity-shear field.

Basically, it worked by reorganizing the gravity in an area so that all of the gravity would be concentrated into one twentieth the volume as a set of narrow, expanding concentric rings. This meant that the pressure over one area would suddenly spike, pulping internal organs and destroying structures. The stripe-pattern over the water was very distinctive as the ship fell apart and the controlled shields collapsed as the users died.

The fifth ship though was where things got potentially hairy. The attack seemed easy at first; the lead Pelican launched a spread of shells that actually sealed away large holes out of the watery shield, and then followed it up with a pair of explosives that were strong to launch the water away in a massive shock-wave. What was revealed, though, was not just the expected destruction, but the formation of the Sanbi Jinchuriki's tailed beast mode, the Three-Tailed Turtle Biju.

As our Pelicans concentrated fire on it, keeping the Jinchuriki distracted and pained, a trio of Custom Pelicans that would normally be part of the reserve came out. This was a special unit even within the Custom Pelican Wing, designed for anti-Biju and Jinchuriki operations. As they approached, they each launched a projectile that formed a massive system of restraints.

Then one aimed carefully at the back and launched a seal-breaking seal to remove the Biju from the Jinchuriki's control. The Jinchuriki fell into the water, and the true Tailed Beast replaced the Tailed Beast Cloak. The Pelicans withdrew a bit while one equipped with communications seals and loud-speakers went forward.

After a few minutes of negotiation, the Sanbi consented to being sealed with the package of Biju Protective Seals in return for not attacking Uzushio or Whirlpool ships or coastal settlements. Apparently, it really just wanted to hang about on the bottom of the sea and relax for a century or two, so it wasn't a difficult deal to make.

With the battle done and history forever changed, our Pelicans, apart from the patrol for survivors, returned to base. After I activated my Pelican's reverse-summon array, I sat back and stretched, then turned to Sachiko and grinned.

"That's just the type of battle I like Uzushiogakure to be involved in. Total destruction of the enemy, and only some lost equipment on our side. Awesome, wasn't it?"

"It was." She still seemed a bit stunned, so I decided to ask what she was thinking.

"Neh, Sachiko-chan, this is a great thing! A great achievement for Uzushiogakure. An enemy has just tried to attack us, and suffered ruin at next to no cost. What are you thinking that has you so contemplative?" She seemed to wake up a bit at that, and gave a light shake to her body before grinning faintly.

"Ah, I was just thinking, master, about what kind of name you'd like for yourself." My only excuse for not understanding what she was getting at is that I was still a bit caught up in our victory, and the idea of what that meant for warfare in this benighted world.

"What do you mean? I already have a perfectly good name, Uzumaki Daichi." She smiled a bit wider, and even laughed a touch.

"I meant, Daichi-sama, that you'll doubtless get some sort of cognomen out of this. After all, you were instrumental in inventing the Cyclone seals and the Pelican, weren't you? What do you think it will be? The Pelican of Uzushiogakure, maybe?" I blanched. Fuck if I would get such a lame name. The Pelican of Uzushiogakure indeed.

"No way! I refuse. I'll just say it was all Hikaru jii-san and Kazuo-sama," I pouted. She laughed aloud, a rare thing for her, clear and pretty, and I just looked at her.

"I'm sorry master, *hahaha*, it's just, here you are, having just caused what I suspect was the single most unbalanced battle in history, and you're pouting. It's just too funny!" I had to laugh a bit at that too.

"That's alright, Sachiko-chan. And don't apologize for laughing; you have a very nice laugh. You should always feel free to laugh around me, especially when we're in private, ok? Especially if I get a lame name like the Pelican. That way at least one of us can enjoy it, and I can at least enjoy your laugh."

"Yes, Daichi-sama," she dead-panned, holding in her amusement again.

"Gah. Impossible. I think this is what Hikaru jii-san was telling me about, how women are impossible." Her mask cracked.

Victory was truly mine that day.


	3. c 23-33

Chapter 23: Merits of Victory

A few minutes later, and I was back in communication with the Whirlpool Council. This time there were many more who were teleconferencing in, mostly because they were in the field or at sea with their men.

"Excellent job, all of you," Kazuo-sama began the meeting. "This was a historic moment, one where our skills with seals allowed us to defeat a force that might have otherwise destroyed us, and all without a single life lost. Truly, congratulations are in order." He started clapping, immediately followed by everyone else, and continued for about fifteen seconds before stopping.

"But even out of those that have earned honors from this action, there are some actions that deserve special recognition. The Pelican pilot who used the Star-burst seals to such great effect, and his friend, a genin who faithfully sank a fifth of his chakra into batteries every day for months so that the pilot might power such a weapon for a single battle. The Sealing Department Members who supplied not just the general designs for the seals we used, but also the Custom Pelicans that were capable of defeating those that had held strong through the storm of our fury, and even vanquish a Jinchuriki in full Bijuu mode. The groups within the Sealing Department that developed first the Cyclone prototypes and then the Pelican prototypes. But even of these that deserve special recognition, there is one who stands out. Uzumaki Daichi, please stand." Oh fuck. No! Why. I hated that sort of shit, everyone was looking at me. Look at me when I'm, I don't know, fifteen and not a fucking midget child anymore, ok? Too much to ask? Apparently.

I stood, as EVERYONE looked at my screen.

"I present Uzumaki Daichi the Seal-Hawk, who came up with the original idea for both the Cyclone seals and the Pelican. He is currently serving as the Consul to Konohagakure, and has just succeeded in getting their Hokage to commit two thousand eight hundred ninja to the counter-attack. A fine young man who exemplifies the qualities that we value in Whirlpool, and who would likely beg off of all this attention if he could. But, just as it is a citizen and vassal's duty to do their utmost for their home, it is a leader and lord's duty to reward those who are most effective. Uzumaki Daichi Fuutaka, Junior Baron Courtier of the Fifth Rank, is hereby promoted to Baron of the Fourth Rank and given Right-of-Access, with suitable income for his position from our treasury and a priority choice of the lands to be assigned after the war for his fief."

Fuck… well. It looked like the girls at the academy would be chasing me even harder. At least my name wasn't fucking Pelican. Fuutaka, literally "Seal-Hawk", wasn't bad. And a priority choice of lands could be pretty damned valuable, especially if I made a little cabal with Tou-san and a few of his friends who were also likely to earn smaller fiefs of their own. I understood why Kazuo-sama did it, of course; it wasn't exactly single-handed, but I was a significant part of our victory. Getting a thousand more ninja from Konoha than even the more optimistic estimates would massively reduce Uzushio's casualties and increase our gains. And I was quite in favor with the Uzumaki leadership, especially within Kazuo-sama's faction and the sealers.

It made sense that I would be heaped with riches and honors. That said, it also meant I had to get a load more retainers and some subordinate samurai from somewhere, and find someone to manage my interests since I'd be in Konoha for the foreseeable future. Maybe Tou-san wouldn't mind being my new second in command? Oh god, Ojii-sama was likely to gift me more retainers, especially now that I was a full-on Baron, rather than a Courtier.

The Right of Access part was pretty cool. It basically meant I had the right to decide that whatever it was that I wanted to talk about was important enough that Kazuo-sama would have to hear me, right then. If I thought it necessary, I could interrupt him when he was mid sleep, or even not sleeping with his wife or mistresses. Oh, I surely wouldn't for anything less than an apocalypse, but still, it was pretty a pretty cool right to be assigned, and a massive indication of honor. There were much higher lords without that right; it wasn't something that could be inherited, but had to be earned, so it was always a mark of high favor.

Other than that, Kazuo-sama started getting everyone organized to receive Konohagakure and Land of Fire troops, began the round-up of the ships that were normally merchantmen to transport our invasion, organized who would be in charge of making sure there was sufficient surveillance, and made sure that everyone was giving chakra to the village stores to increase ammunition supplies along with all the other details of a successful invasion. Mercifully, I didn't have to deal with that bureaucracy, as I was instructed to take a series of images from the battle spaced one minute apart, and report our victory to the Hokage.

I was authorized for the most basic level of information release on the Cyclone and Pelican systems, to wit that they existed, Cyclones had a range of at least twenty kilometers, and Pelicans were a flying weapon system; this was considered terrifying enough, even though it only described a fraction of our weapons' true capabilities. Honestly, Konoha's leadership wasn't really equipped to even comprehend how game-changing our new capabilities were, and if they had might have been driven to panic. Just what we had already demonstrated was enough to change the balance of power between our nations; Uzushio was certainly no longer the junior partner in our alliance.

I was already in my regalia, so it wasn't that hard to get ready; I just had to change out my device so that the new border would indicate my improved rank, and I was off with Sachiko at my should and the official scroll in hand. When I arrived at the Hokage's Tower and was directed to him, I came into a beehive. Mobilizing twenty-eight hundred ninja for a forced march to defend against an imminent invasion took a lot of organization; who would have guessed?

I got directions to the Hokage, and decided to go with the super-formal route of having Sachiko announce me.

"I present Whirlpool's Consul to Konohagakure, Baron of the Fourth Rank, Uzumaki Daichi Fuutaka!" Saichiko said in a firm and loud voice, then took one step to the side and bowed. Heads were turning our way, and I noticed we had the Hokage's attention.

"Hokage-sama, I bear tidings of the battle of West Kaizoku Sea as instructed by my Lord, Uzumaki Kazuo-dono!" For the sake of the moment's drama, I ceremoniously unrolled the scroll, even though I had written it and memorized the contents.

"Sandaime Hokage Sarutobi Hiruzen-sama, greetings and salutations. This messenger bears glad tidings of victory. At Four Hours Past Dawn this day, Whirlpool forces engaged the forces of Kirigakure, Kumogakure, Iwagakure and associated vassals in the region of the Kaizoku sea two hundred miles East-North-East of Wave.

"At half past the Fourth Hour, the battle was concluded. Enemy losses were total, and include a final count of one hundred and eight ships, with a final estimate of ten thousand ninja and four thousand assorted sailors and crew. Kirigakure's Jinchuriki, the holder of the Sanbi, fell in battle. There were no found or suspected survivors, and patrols remain in the area to ensure that any remaining enemy are destroyed. Allied casualties include two injuries taken in regular operation of our Naval vessels en route to where the battle occurred. There were no allied deaths during this operation.

"Included in this missive are images of the battle taken every minute, and Uzumaki Daichi Fuutaka, my Consul and vassal-Baron of the Fourth Rank, has been instructed to give a basic briefing of how this was accomplished.

"I give my best wishes for your continued health and prosperity, and look forward to the fruits of our alliance. We shall be in contact. Signed by the hand of the Daimyo of Whirlpool, Lord of Uzushiogakure, Clan Head of the Uzumaki, Uzumaki Kazuo."

There was a deafening silence as I handed the scroll and images to the Hokage. Soon enough a grizzled Jonin Captain broke it.

"Is this some sort of joke? How the hell do you kill ten thousand men without any losses?" The Hokage replied before I could demonstrate any ruffled feathers; the guy wasn't Danzo though, so I'd have given him the benefit of the doubt.

"Ah, I've found that it's typically best to be believe what Daichi-san tells you, and just be surprised at the reality. And may I congratulate you on your elevation." A nice little sop to my pride; it was nice to know he cared!

"Thank you, Hokage-sama. As to how we achieved this, the enemy never actually saw a single one of our troops. We used two new weapons created using seals. The first, the Cyclone Seals, are capable of delivering projectiles, including weaponized seals, at high speed and rate of fire over a long distance, at least twenty kilometers. The second, the Pelican, is a flying puppet remotely controlled through seals. It too mounts Cyclone Seals. We used real-time surveillance seals and our weapons to destroy the enemy from a range of twenty kilometers, and continued bombardment until all enemy assets were destroyed. The images show the progression of the battle."

The room erupted into whispers and discussion as to what this meant, both for warfare as a whole and for the conflict with Iwa, Kumo and Kiri. The Hokage motioned me closer, so we could speak a bit more privately, though with ninja everyone would be listening anyways.

"I assume you will want them to answer for this situation?"

"I cannot claim to speak for Kazuo-dono, as I have no orders in this situation, but my belief is that we will force Lightning and Earth to pull back their ninja and pay reparations under threat of naval action and aerial raids respectively. As for Mist and Water Country, I believe that Kazuo-dono will wish to make an example of them. The Fire Daimyo has generously made available three legions, and enough auxiliaries and lesser sized units to make up a fourth, as well as some naval forces primarily focused in transports.

"With his twenty thousand men, the twenty-eight hundred from Konohagakure, three legions from Whirlpool, our naval and aerial support and whatever mercenaries and opportunists we can scrape together, we have a force of about forty thousand soldiers and five thousand ninja. Mist can at its maximum marshal twelve thousand ninja, many not capable of combat at the level needed, and a hundred thousand soldiers, half of whom will be militia; these men must be split between the various islands. With our ability to conduct long range naval bombardment, and use aerial reconnaissance and strikes, as well as Water's inability to reinforce their islands when our ships are present, I believe we can conquer them without too many difficulties. The fact that Water and Mist have always treated their citizens poorly will make them less resistant to conversion, and reduce the time before the territories are productive and integrated into Whirlpool."

"An astute analysis. It matches with what I understand from the situation. And what if Lightning or Earth are unreasonable?"

"A demonstration that we can attack their palaces. And if that fails, their factories, barracks, and other military targets may be attacked from impunity by air. If they really want to push matters, well, we'll see. They should hope it does not come to that. We Uzumaki take attempts to destroy our home very personally, and there are many things that the sealing department considers too horrific for normal situations that might be used."

"Quite. Please relay my thanks to Kazuo-dono for the information. We will remain in contact with your commanders, and our troops will continue to arrive over the next two weeks. Now, you should go celebrate your new station," he said with a kind smile, then paused a moment as I grimaced at the reminder.

"Not that happy?"

"It's not that. It is a great honor. It's just, this will only mean more work. And Ojii-sama is sure to give me more retainers," I grouched. He laughed at my reply, shaking his head.

"I'm not sure whether I should be relieved or afraid that you aren't interested in rule."

"Hmmm… Both? That's normally my answer to either/or questions like that."

"I will take that under advisement. Have a good day."

"You too, Hokage-sama."

I bowed and left.

Chapter 24: Academy's End

And so it came to be that while I whiled away my time at the Academy, Whirlpool and the Land of Fire fought a war of conquest in Water Country. For the most part, it did not impact me. Tou-san, who had consented to become my first vassal (and how weird was that), had command of the efforts on one of the smaller islands with heavy ore deposits. The island also included a nice, protected harbor with a small town. I selected it, and much of the surroundings, as my fief; Tou-san ensured that the area was pacified with minimum damage to the civilians and infrastructure.

The war progressed very quickly, especially initially. A leaflet campaign promising quarter and safety for those that swore fealty to Whirlpool or were ninja willing to transfer allegiance to either Whirlpool or Konoha proved quite effective. After their Mizukage was located by a Konohagakure recon team and killed in an air-strike, the Mist ninja were about evenly split between those that changed sides, those that stayed out of it, and those that fought a semi-futile guerrilla campaign.

The main military battles went even better. Blocks of militia and infantry armed with spears and bows were no match for our aerial assaults or units of Uzushio Guards deployed with Cyclone-gun systems. The DEWS became quite widespread within Uzushio's forces, and was apparently highly feared as the "invisible fire". I laughed a bit at that.

So, while there was resistance, and tensions were high, for the most part things were shaping out as a massive success. The Fire Daimyo's troops and Konoha forces could and were drawn down a bit. The biggest problems actually came from a coalition of pirates and pirate-ninja whom Kirigakure had allowed to operate with semi-impunity. The reason why? Because the pirates would attack shipping, which would then be forced to deal with Kirigakure for protection and retaliation. Kirigakure could get a mission to wipe out a pirate village, warn them to move, then burn an empty village to the ground for a hefty price.

Whirlpool, who was on the other side of the pirate/merchant equation were not so generous towards the scum. In the greatest single failure of Uzushio troops in the war, they executed an ingenious trap for an escort frigate, and would have captured it if the captain had not activated the self-destruct. Following that there was a concentrated effort to wipe the pirates out, burning out half a dozen of their villages in a simultaneous assault and crucifying many of the captives.

I gave advice remotely as well as providing some larger seal-works. I had advised a focus on psy-ops and getting the population to turn in our favor. I also used a large portion of my wealth from sealing and elevated position to recruit skilled workers from other locations who were willing to swear fealty and migrate into our zone of administration. More militarily, we recruited heavily out of the better ronin samurai and ninja, and offered top-quality seal-enhanced gear that I prepared as rewards for service. Tou-san earned a land-grant and more minor title, as did many of his lieutenants and our new vassals, most of whom had sworn to Tou-san as my stand-in until I could arrive.

Ojii-sama did in fact send me more retainers. This time he sent me five; Sachiko's Aunt and Uncle, as well as their three kids. Of their kids, all were boys. Two were older, eighteen and sixteen respectively. The eighteen-year-old had a good level of ninja training, and was well suited for the mix of forest-fighting and amphibious combat that Tou-san was participating in; I sent him to be Tou-san's assistant and receive more training in jutsu and sword fighting. The sixteen-year-old was qualified as an Adept sealer; I was tempted to keep him, but decided that I needed someone I could have run errands in Uzushiogakure. Plus, I had no real idea as to how to train him, so I got Hikaru jii-san to agree to take that task on in return for the boy's assistance.

That left me with the youngest, a twelve-year-old boy called Hisakawa Yasu. He was trained as a chakra-sensor and tracker, and filled out his skills with stealth and close-quarters combat. I decided to take him for myself, and have him as the third member of our eventual squad. As for Auntie and Uncle, as I came to call them, the Consulate needed more staff with the war on and the closer relationship between our countries, and I needed more trustworthy backup. They were also both highly skilled in the stealthy and subtle techniques that I had never learned, and backed up the Academy's instruction in things like genjutsu and poisons with afterhours tutoring. It also did wonders for my homesickness to have people who were from Uzushiogakure, and I loved hearing stories about a grandfather who had always seemed so restrained and distant.

Other than as I've described though, and my occasional ceremonial presence at a war memorial or the funeral of a particularly important person, the war didn't really effect me.

Though I should mention that there was one funeral I was glad to attend: Danzo's. Apparently, he had been in-country trying to get a Water-country clan that had mostly steered clear of the fighting to defect to Konoha. They demanded a senior figure to negotiate with, and I guess that their bloodline was one Danzo wanted. He was in the compound when the local Whirlpool area commander ordered an aerial razing, and Danzo died in a tragic friendly fire incident. His body was found half-crushed by fallen stone, and had some fairly heavy burns over his torso. He died a few minutes after the inspection team checked the area over to confirm the strike's effectiveness.

I have no idea what level of involvement we may or may not have had; hell, elements within Konohagakure could have arranged it (the man had enough enemies, after all), or, for all I knew, it was a legitimate accident (which would be hilarious). I suspected, actually, that the strike was ordered by someone trying to get more of the ninja clans to join Whirlpool; it was a kind of "if you don't join, and soon, you never know what kind of accident there might be."

I almost couldn't go to the funeral because I couldn't stop smiling at the news, but managed to put up with it to look at the corpse myself. After all, I wanted to make sure the fucker was dead.

For the most part though, while I was at the Academy I raised my secondary skills to at least acceptable levels. They didn't need to be the focus of my combat style, but I refused to have any glaring weaknesses.

A big part of not having weaknesses was genjutsu training. For a long time, I had basically depended on my innate resistance to genjutsu due to my prodigious chakra and constant high-level internal chakra flow techniques. The problem was, other than that, I had no defenses. So, I took the entire genjutsu course through the academy. Introduction to Illusions, Advanced Illusion Resistance, Advanced Illusion Detection and Dispelling, Advanced Genjutsu Techniques and Special Focus- Genjutsu.

It turned out that I had certain advantages and disadvantages, namely a large supply of ridiculously dense spiritual chakra. As an advantage, once I learned the actual techniques to preventing illusions from taking hold, and how to notice and dispel any that did, I became notoriously resistant to genjutsu. The instructor brought in a pair of specialists at the end to show us how far we had to go, one of the villages best from each of the Uchiha and the Kurama clans. I ended up resisting even a direct eye-to-eye with the Sharingan, so I was pretty stoked. It became something of a challenge for these specialists to test their genjutsu on me, and every few weeks we'd get together and they'd test their techniques.

As for casting genjutsu myself, well, the results were mixed. I was actually quite good at putting people into genjutsu, but mine tended to hit with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer rather than the gentle backdoor entry into the mind that it should have been. Because of the density and volume of my spiritual chakra, unless I took a long time to dilute it (by which point my standard control was pretty shaky since it was so comparatively unfamiliar to me) then whenever I injected my chakra into someone to hack their senses it turned out more like a carjacking.

Sure, I might have them, but only a small part of genjutsu are for direct combat. They're much more useful for stealth or subtle mental manipulation. Whenever I tried to use those techniques it was like being an invisible man with a huge blinking neon sign saying "Invisible Man Here! Right Here!" pointing at me. Not exactly subtle.

On the other hand, if you needed to terrify an enemy force, I was your man. After the whole "Presence of Death" incident had made the rounds, my instructor thought it might be best if I practiced on a criminal rather than another student. This proved to be a good move. I used the basic "Hell Viewing" technique, and tried not to overcharge it too much. The prisoner, a low ranking foreign missing nin up to criminal shit in the Land of Fire, screamed for three hours under a genjutsu that normally fell apart after at most a half hour.

Eventually, one of the guards accompanying us tried to dispel the illusion, but couldn't. A few other people tried with similar effects. Then I tried, and couldn't dispel my own illusion. It turned out that I had effectively poisoned his chakra, and I couldn't manage to filter out all of mine and allow his to restore itself.

The prisoner was put out of his misery, and I was advised not to use genjutsu on allies, ever. It was a bit disheartening to be honest; our seduction and counter-seduction instructor had taught us about a genjutsu you could use during sex to make things more intense, and I had been looking forward to getting to try it after my interest in sex returned with the puberty fairy.

Over all that study I developed a personal genjutsu/ninjutsu attack. It worked by combining principles of my Chains, genjutsu, and mental reinforcement. I called it the "Mind-Flay" technique. It was about as friendly as that sounds. Basically, I'd launch a lance of spiritual chakra that travelled through the enemy's system like a genjutsu, then catastrophically reinforced the brain, giving the target brain-death.

It didn't need a hand-sign, though that could help with focus, and was fucking fast since Yin chakra is very quick regardless of density. On the other hand, because I didn't have the Yang-combination, it was a launched rather than guided jutsu, so it became less effective with range. The cool thing about it was that it avoided most defensive techniques, even a lot of those based on chakra powered shield techniques and would smash through most genjutsu defenses like a wrecking-ball through tissue paper.

It was a fairly terrifying assassination technique, and far more lethal than other genjutsu-focused students' personal projects who tended to go for very personalized seduction/charisma techniques for political or spying purposes. I wasn't sure our teacher really approved of my methodology, but she recognized I had few other options given my limitations with the actual subtle parts of genjutsu - itself the ninja art that focused on subtlety. Incidentally, those genjutsu classes were some of the only ones where I wasn't within the top three of the class.

Those were the highlights of my academy experience. Of course, I learned dozens of other things. To put it in perspective, the CIA used something called 'the Clandestine Service Trainee Program' back on Earth to train paramilitary officers. Those are the scary guys that you see in movies, rather than the analysts who actually make up the majority of the organization. That program lasted eighteen months. Granted, they typically recruited people with prior military training and experience, and the training was full time. That said, the Academy went pretty hard (chakra helps with recovery and endurance), especially given the age constraints, and I was training in my off time. I had four years to pick up all the secondary skills, since my main combat skills were already established. I had fun with it, and I learned a lot.

I studied covert infiltration, which included both chakra and chakra-less techniques to climb buildings and break into them, as well as aggressive infiltration, which included breaking and entering techniques. In my Document Retrieval section, we learned how to crack through the mechanical and chakra mechanisms that protected safes. I learned how to play cards and gamble correctly, and cheat at the same. I was taught how to pickpocket and spot the local criminals and fences in the Urban Survival course, as well as how to hide tools and spoils on my body even during a pat-down.

I tried out the chakra healing course, but failed out when I found that it was basically impossible for me to strip my identity from my chakra; I still had my medical seals though, so that was something. I learned how to survive in any wilderness from arctic to equatorial desert, and how to track, trap and prepare a wide variety of foods. Then I was taught how to track someone who's at least a little sneaky in those environments, how to trap them even without seals, and how to be sneaky and spot traps myself.

I learned how to better read body language, and how to have my body language give what messages I wanted in my Interpersonal Skills class. I improved those skills in my Advanced Seduction Techniques class, which also taught some pretty extensive massage; I even got an offer for personal instruction in acupuncture from the female instructor when I was a bit older (pretty sure that was a throwaway seduction attempt on Konoha's part, though I was equally sure we'd both enjoy it).

I tried out the Covert Identities class, and was told that as long as I was playing myself, I'd be alright but to never try and pretend to be someone else; it was just embarrassing. I learned how to make improvised weapons in a variety of settings, and what common household objects could take the most damage.

I learned at least the basics of the Konohagakure General Unarmed Style. It was a bit like krav-maga, but focused even more on simple, direct motions executed with a maximum of violence and action. I picked up a bit about how to fight with knives, and more on how to fight with kunai. I was taught to throw kunai and shuriken, more because it was a graduation requirement than that I ever expected to need it, then added a class on how to throw coins, nails, and other improvised objects because why not? That said, I was eleven; at eleven, who doesn't love throwing around sharp spiky stars of ninja-awesome? So, it wasn't much of an imposition.

In a trio of classes on toxins, I was educated about the poisons, whether synthetic, natural (plant or animal), or enhanced-natural recipes that I could use to make things like shuriken actually useful, and was given instruction on how to combine poisons with water jutsu to boot.

I knew that I'd likely never use a tenth of what I so carefully memorized, but it still might come in handy (whether in that life or the next), and moreover, it was all pretty damned cool. I did improve in more useful ways too.

I sparred with the advanced sword students when I could be bothered, and wrecked a training field once for a jutsu demonstration. I improved my control over my chains, my skill with the Whirlpool-Fist and Sword, and continued to make sure that Sachiko and Yasu were progressing well under the Academy's training as well as what they were getting from Auntie and Uncle. I forced Yasu to learn a few combat jutsu, and continued Sachiko's instruction in Water-techniques started by Tou-san. I made sure to continue training with my seals, and thought I might hit the seventh level of intuition pretty soon.

My chakra sensing continued to improve in range and resolution. But most of all I focused on my body; my biggest limitation was speed, followed by strength, and over those four years I fixed that weakness. I checked on the still sleeping Kyubi, and released chakra that I had cleaned of hostile intent into the environment daily. I continued to improve my chakra density and volume, though my channels were starting to show the restriction in growth indicative of the onset of puberty, and made sure that my control didn't decrease due to the influence of the Kyubi's chakra introduced by the seal.

So, all in all, I had a great four years. There were some negatives. I missed my family something fierce, even though I had weekly video-conferences. Kaa-san had given birth to younger sibling I'd never seen in person two years into my stay after one of Tou-san's visits back from the front. My Uzumaki Fuutaka family compound was a building in a country I'd never been to. I missed the sea air and shores of our island too. But I put those things out of my mind, as much as I could, and continued to take everything I could from life.

I may not have been as focused as might have been optimal, or driven myself as hard as I could like I did in preparation for Kyubi's sealing, but when I stood on the parade ground with the other graduates wearing both my Uzushio and Konoha hitai-ates, I was comfortable in the fact that my retainers could match jonin and that I was the superior of any of the "young geniuses" like, for example, Namikaze Minato who had himself just been promoted to Jonin.

I knew my time at the Academy had been well spent. And there was only really one more event to qualify me as a real ninja; my first personal kill.

Chapter 25: Interlude 3: The Barracuda

I had a fearsome reputation, one earned with pain and blood and corpses. "The Barracuda," they called me, for my size and viciousness and my summoning animal. I may not have been one of the Seven Swordsmen, mostly because of my focus on jutsu, but as a veteran and Jonin Captain I was just as feared.

But while my size, and power, and viciousness may have made me famous, it was my intelligence that brought me victory. I would use my barracudas to scout enemy ships, plan meticulously and use every advantage I could.

Of all things, I most hated going into a situation without knowledge. I'd rather incompetent subordinates, untrustworthy allies and bad weather at sea than to be entering into a situation I knew nothing about. And right then, as I led the Kirigakure Sixth Assault Company in an invasion of Uzushiogakure from the deck of my ship, the Red Maw, I was full of hatred.

Two years ago, we knew what was happening with Uzushio, knew the strength of their men and navy. But then more and more of our raids didn't come back. After a few months, there was a survivor, a chunin who reported, injured, to the Mizukage about weapons "tearing apart our men with the same ease they tore apart the air, accompanied by the sound of thunder."

The Mizukage had him executed for cowardice, but the tale spread. One year ago, I heard whispers that we tried some asinine plan to spread a plague. Uzushio and Wave went into quarantine for a while, and we received reports that Senju Tsunade was spotted traveling there, but we didn't even hear rumors of the mass casualties you'd expect from those Plaguebearer bastards.

And now that fucking bastard the Mizukage decided it was the "best possible time to attack". That we would "destroy those Uzumaki shits once and for all!" Gods, how I wished we didn't decide everything based on strength in this fucking world. Maybe then, my ass-hat of a brother wouldn't have become Mizukage.

But that is not the case in this bloody, stinking, introduction-to-hell that we call life. And so there we were. Part of the greatest invasion fleet ever, certainly the largest fleet of ninja. All Seven of the Seven Swordsmen, and a hundred other names that evoked fear and terror. And all I could do was worry, worry about what we didn't know. Because if there's one thing I learned, what you don't know does kill you.

Just as I was about to order the sails taken in a bit, I started hearing a thunderous ripping sound and explosions and screams behind us on the starboard side. Looking back, I saw destruction raining down, approaching over the water like the leading edge of raindrops in a storm. Masts falling, sails afire, ships floundering. The screams of men started to reach me, and I screamed out too.

"All water jutsu users, on my mark, shield. Ready! MARK!" I cast out my strongest shield too, and screamed at a nearby genin to go get that bastard Jinchuriki. Maybe I'd be thanking my brother for saddling me with the little psycho after all. Moments later, they returned at a run.

"Get a shield up. Strong as you can or we're fucked!" I shouted while seeing the armada, the largest gathering of warships I'd ever seen, just sodding collapse through the gaps in our shield techniques.

Thankfully that prick of a Jinchuriki obeyed without his usual whining or lip, and in an unbelievably potent flare of chakra our ship was encased in a sea-blue dome. I could still see the impact as whatever the hell those Uzushio whore-sons were using impacted, but at least it wasn't hitting me or my men. Every now and then the shield buckled in with the echo of an explosion, and the Jinchuriki's face wass growing more and more strained with the weight of the shield jutsu.

Minutes that felt like an eternity passed, and eventually the rain ended. Just as I began to relax, massive holes appeared in the shield, and I had a moment for my last thought: 'I hope my brother's fucking happy now, that idiot.'

Chapter 26: State of Affairs

Following graduation, as potential Elite Genin we had a week off before being assigned a team and Jonin Instructor. I already knew my team – myself, Sachiko and Yatsu – but had no idea about our sensei. Apart from our group training, I took the time to catch up on some of my sealing work and the paperwork that came with being Lord of Seal-Hawk Harbor.

I know, the name is just… Well, Kaa-san picked it, and had Tou-san apply it, and then I couldn't change peoples' minds. Kaa-san asked if I didn't like it with a pout, and… I was a good son. That was it.

The sealing work in this instance was a set of two dozen seal-enhanced swords for samurai and ninja Non-Commissioned Officers (NCOs), and a set of a half-dozen transferable DEWS and HUD seals for my officers in what was shaping up to be a fairly decent private army. The DEWS and HUD seals were a bit of a pain; since they weren't legally distributable to forces outside of Uzushiogakure's own, I couldn't just have Hikaru jii-san run off the copies from the Sealing Department printers in exchange for a chunk of chakra batteries. But since the seals weren't as classified as, say, the Cyclone Magazine production methods, Hikaru jii-san and I, as the inventors, were allowed to do the sealing work ourselves (so long as we included the requisite security seals too).

The problem though is we had to do all of the work ourselves; this included actually applying the seal to the body, unless the seal was self-applying. Since neither of us were on Hawk's Haven (the island's name… apparently Tou-san was getting on with Ojii-sama again, and this was part of it), that meant that I had to make self-applying seals which took a bit more work.

Funnily enough, the swords were actually much more difficult to make than the DEWS. They were based off of my own swords, Red Night's Sky and Morning's Storm, but I had needed to figure out a way of getting similar elemental-technique enhancing performance without chakra-conductive metal. Chakra-metal was extremely expensive and the kind of thing used by high ranking Samurai or the top of the elite ninja who could afford it.

I'd spent a few months of spare time hanging out with one of the better, and more creative, smiths in Konoha. Eventually, after a lot of ruined steel (that I paid for), we figured out a way to use seals to set up an elemental chakra imbuing field for the steel as it was worked. Then, different seals were applied to the Tang after it was worked to keep the elemental chakra in place, and to help channel more chakra that was added by the eventual user. The end result was a sword capable of enhancing elemental chakra channeled through it, or providing a low-level of chakra conversion for neutral chakra flowed through the blade, much in the same way that natural chakra metal did.

It was about sixty percent as good as my own blades, but brought the price down from "something only a wealthy Lord could afford" to "something a Lord's personal guards, or generally elite units might be equipped with". Also worth bearing in mind was that my own swords were not just chakra metal but seal-enhanced chakra metal. Although my skills were still nowhere near whoever had made my swords, the swords we were producing were likewise seal-enhanced, unlike most chakra metal blades which didn't have that kind of elemental seal-work built in. Most swords didn't have any seal-work built in, as writing seals in metal was a fairly specialized skill and most Uzumaki sealers stayed in Uzushio. And that meant that my swords had further improved chakra channeling, if only for a single elemental type.

For a fairly significant additional price, we could take a vial of someone's chakra imbued blood and work that into the metal along with another seal, and improve performance for that person; it would typically bring the performance up to about eighty percent of my own blades. As a bonus, it basically ensured repeat business over time, as the blade would need to be re-attuned to each user.

Another popular option was to have the sword be turned into an inanimate summon contract. For a heftier fee, we'd even package an auto-attunement in with the summon contract, but then the summoning tattoos would ensure repeat business. It was difficult – and thus expensive – enough though that it brought the price back to "wealthy Lord" range.

We were working on changing the process so that we could attune a blade to two types of chakra at once at the request of a number of bloodline clans, but had not made significant strides. Then of course there was the even harder problem of channeling say, ice chakra as opposed to "merely" being able to channel either wind or water; it was a work in progress.

A much higher priority for me was to figure out a semi-automatic process to apply the seals; once I did that, I planned on setting up a manufacturing center in my town. Making a regular seal-making seal could be pretty difficult; this was horrendous.

In the regular process, you took a seal, for sake of argument an explosive seal. Then you wrote a seal that was programmed to apply the correct levels of chakra in the right shape and with the right timing to create the explosive seal you wanted. By feeding the seal-writer chakra through a battery, and providing stores of paper and ink (or using a more advanced array capable of chakra-scribing), it could print out seals.

This got more complicated if you wanted to seal something onto a physical surface that wasn't flat, like armor. The positioning was frequently important, and the seal-path needed to be described in three dimensional rather than two dimensional space. It got much more complicated when the seal interacted with the base material. In the case of the seal-swords, they effectively had an inorganic chakra system due to the infusions during the smithing process. But, the material properties (iron, carbon, how hard it was hit, random chance) influenced the chakra density and flow-lines, which impacted the seal's orientation and positioning, and even the size of some of the individual symbols.

That meant that the seal-printer had to not only be able to write out the seals (some of which were quite complicated) and do so into metal (which was a complication in and of itself), but the seal-printer also had to "scan" the sword and then run calculations to write the seal. This was further complicated by the fact that many of these calculations were ones I (and other Uzumaki sealers) did intuitively, so I had to figure out a whole load of advanced but highly specific sealing theory pretty much from scratch.

I was glad I had taken computer-programming once upon a time, and had some experience with automating manufacturing processes using CAD-controlled lathes and mills. That brought the project down from "practically impossible" to "just really ridiculously difficult". But that's why it was a fun project.

As a note, many seals, especially at high levels, included a ninjutsu input that defined field of effect, intensity, etc, so being able to write the seal was only part of it. Sort of like a telephone; the phone makes the call, but the user tells it which number. Also, as people got better at writing seals, they gained a feel for how all sorts of weird things would affect the seal's efficiency, and learned to compensate.

While it wasn't as important for bulk basic explosive notes, which were basically the lowest level of applied seals, for something like a sword it was similar in effect to the difference between mass-produced swords or those made by a master. The chakra balance would be a bit worse, it wouldn't feel quite as "sharp" or precise, that kind of thing. Still, quantity had a quality all of its own, and a functional factory would mean a new revenue stream for me and my people. More importantly, I would finally be able to stop making swords as my forces grew.

I had given the general sword-making process over to Uzushio's Sealing Department, and it had already become a major earner even though I only got a tithe; the demand wasn't even close to being met. I figured I was about a month away from being done with at least a functional prototype of the automatic-sealer seal, at which point I'd really start raking it in. And once the market reached saturation, I could drop price so that lower-than-elite but still high-quality units could be equipped, then maybe even regular units.

Outside of Whirlpool, everyone's forces still depended on steel; I planned to become the premier weapons supplier.

As an added benefit, the new techniques would, eventually, lead to better laser weapons and a major next step in developing DEWS. Metal could tolerate much larger heat and radiant chakra damage (both caused by very high chakra-flows) than other materials, and so I hoped that with proper development and improvement of metal-sealing techniques I'd finally be able to bring the power and rate of fire high enough to make it more than a personal weapon.

Those were the applied sealing projects I focused on; on a more cerebral level, I was interested in what kinds of materials I could make by combining my scientific knowledge and chakra manipulation. But even for that, those sealing projects were a great first step.

Gaining Uncle and Auntie and Yasu hadn't changed anything about Sachiko being my chief assistant (shadow, minion, best-friend – she was a multi-role retainer), and so it was part of her duties to have everything organized for my quarterly intelligence review video-conference with Tou-san.

The intelligence review was pretty interesting. I was watching as the world changed; more interestingly, I was watching as my country changed from a small but rich one into a real world power. There were all sorts of political developments, from how Whirlpool's society was shaping itself to how other countries were reacting. It was very cool to watch history being made; admittedly, it filled me with a certain narcissistic glee that I was the cause.

Uzushiogakure had maintained its policy of semi-isolation. They didn't really want all those possibly dangerous ninja coming over. So it stayed much more of a "family-clan-vassal-village" location, with a healthy helping of "fortress", and was actually even less focused on "ninja" arts than before as the sealing arts gained prominence (partially my fault). Anyone with any inclination towards sealing was being pushed into that direction, and expanding chakra-networks to allow for more seals to be used became a major Academy focus there.

Whirlpool was also following a fairly intelligent policy with regards to Mist and Water Country. Rather than having large centers of semi-isolated and self-interested ninja (a recipe for intrigue if ever there was one), a number of mixed elite military villages had been coming about. They typically combined a traditional military base garrisoned by regular soldiers, as well as a smaller command and special operations section staffed by samurai and ninja. The bases were often located near or at a port.

There was a focus on keeping these places about the soldiers and family members who lived there, and keeping most of the business in nearby towns. The troops drew pay from the central government. Uzushiogakure was still the premier military center, even if it focused most on the Uzumaki clan and sealing, as it pretty much always has been.

There were of course the traditional samurai lords and their retainers as well, though Kazuo had gone for a more "late-period" bureaucracy that included samurai and efficient officials, rather than a super-traditional feudalism. There was still some more traditional feudalism, but it was, for the most part, enforced more by custom than law; citizens had a high degree of rights in Whirlpool.

Take my own retainers; there were a number of ways they could leave my service, though their own personal understanding of honor forbade it. Since Water was a recent addition, there were a lot of local "military governors" with broad powers over their territory, but these were not automatic hereditary seats.

Basically, the leader of the Uzumaki, and thus Whirlpool, was elected. He wasn't a big fan of permanent, multi-generational appointments, as the risks of such were well understood. For all its militaristic traditions and feudal overtones, Whirlpool was fairly meritocratic. It was quite pragmatic though too: wealth, land, and power were considered merits, whether earned personally or through inheritance.

I had a lot of power over my smallish island because I and my family, who had partially come under my theoretical leadership and were heavily involved in the colonization and modernization there, were granted property rights over the whole port-town, and some surrounding fields, forests and mines. I was also the senior court official, and technically military governor. Further, Tou-san, partially under my instructions, had already turned it around and made it productive (or at least peaceful), and had recruited enough troops to actually send them out to help Whirlpool where there was trouble with Kiri ninja or other Water Country hold-outs.

It helped that I was a somewhat notorious genius and none of my fellow countrymen were too interested in seeing what I might do if pissed off, especially with so much favor with the national leadership. There were lower lying fruits for the greedy with a shit-ton of land and honors up for grabs, especially considering how small Uzushiogakure was.

So for that laundry list of reasons, I had been able to consolidate almost total control over my island; cue maniacal laughter.

Overall, Whirlpool was effectively shaping up into a mostly benevolent four-tier semi-autocratic government with a high level of general rights. The lowest tier were the general citizens, who had general rights but little power or influence beyond that. They could only vote for the most local elections, and many of the more important posts weren't elected to begin with.

The third tier were the non-voting recognized citizens. This included some retainers, clan-members outside of the Uzumaki, low level sealers, ninja and samurai (many from Wave or more recent immigrants or converts). The third tier had some special rights and powers, but not the right to vote for the leader of Uzushiogakure; they did sometimes have voting rights at levels of organization below the national one, depending on the region.

The second and top tiers consisted of voting citizens. The second tier was anyone capable of voting for the Uzushiogakure leader. This included the more important and powerful, with known loyalty to Whirlpool, as well as many of those who might have been third tier if they weren't citizens of Uzushiogakure (which had a lower bar for at least basic voting rights, though they'd only be able to cast one or two votes per person).

The second tier was pretty broad, ranging from an Uzushiogakure genin on up to the Lord Admiral of the Fleet. As people from the third tier were considered to have proven loyalties, they would typically gain at least minimal voting rights.

The top tier was anyone who was capable of voting for the Uzumaki Head Candidates. This top tier consisted only of Uzumaki clan members. That said, a low-ranked Uzumaki was still lower in all other respects than a high-ranked official outside of the Uzumaki, including in the number of votes they could cast once those candidates were selected. Some individuals had been granted the right to vote in Uzumaki elections, typically as a special honor, or to many of those that had married into the clan. This was a long-standing historical policy and had led to the effect where there was such a large number of Uzumaki families from different backgrounds.

Overall, the voting system that was shaping up seemed very practical. It was based on the true fundamental base of democracy, which was not (as many liberals or those with rosy-glasses towards history believed) based on morality.

Democracy came about in Greece as a way of finding out how the military age males felt about their leaders so that they could determine who would win any actual fights over who ruled without actually having the fight. There had been this whole mess involving, of all things, a homosexual love triangle (I'm not kidding, you really can't make this shit up- democracy has its roots in homosexuality) involving a pair of leading political figures and their pretty-boy object of affection. It got conflated with all the politics at the time, and basically the situation exploded. To prevent blood from running in the streets in the future, voting was introduced designed to show everyone where the balance of power rested.

But straight democracy doesn't work well when some people are death-dealing gods capable of slaughtering thousands in personal combat. Much in the same way that it didn't work well during the middle ages on Earth, when knights were so much more dangerous than peasants.

Worlds apart, the Uzumaki, Uzushiogakure and Whirlpool had a similar system, though modified to account for this difference in power. Votes depended on personal power, achievements, honors and the like. The Uzumaki, as an essential component of the village (we had all the best sealers) selected leadership candidates, who were then approved by those considered to be loyal to the nation (anyone with Uzushiogakure voting rights), again through a vote depending on power, influence, contribution to the state, etc. The commoners and those new to society weren't really considered to matter. It was harsh, and somewhat favoring males, but it reflected the reality of the situation.

As for the rest of the world, our no-longer-enemies Earth and Lightning had taken fairly significant losses back during that failed invasion, and the minor nations especially were using that chance to escape their clutches and settle scores. Lightning was getting harassed by all the pirates driven away from Mist and Water Country, and had lost their control of Frost which had basically declared neutrality and slowly begun making overtures to Whirlpool.

Earth and the Hidden Rock Village meanwhile had it even worse, as they were embroiled in a little war with Wind and the Sand Village over vassal-states and local influence. River with their Hidden Valley Village had joined in on Wind's side. In Fang and Claw, traditionally Earth and Iwagakure turf they were being pressed pretty hard. Rain, unfortunately right between the major Suna and Valley combined command and the main Earth forces, was getting fucked as usual; the Sand and Earth ninja made things even worse as they were particularly harsh on non-allied civilians.

Konohagakure had actually done really well politically. Grass had moved much more in the direction of Leaf and Fire, as had Waterfall, Rice and Hotsprings. With the recent Uzushio naval dominance, Hotsprings (whose economy depended on tourism and fishing the Haran Bay) had actually made moves to become a part of the Whirlpool alliance with Fire and Konoha, and was basically the junior nation in the developing power-house alliance. Rice was making overtures to both Iron and the Land of Fire; they lacked a ninja village, but didn't have any real enemies and were in a good negotiating position as the local bread-basket.

Whirlpool was becoming the leader of maritime trade, and many of the large international trading companies were locating new offices and transit centers in Water-Country to make use of Whirlpool Naval Escorts for trade convoys. The decrease in corruption and piracy was a huge boon to the former Water territories.

Basically, as far as the Elemental nations went, things were good; very good if you lived in Whirlpool or Fire Country.

Chapter 27: Calling Home

About halfway through the week we were sat in the Consulate communications center in casual clothing, about to have the conference with Tou-san. I was at the head of the table and had Sachiko on the right carrying a stack of papers as well as a notebook and pen for any notes.

Tou-san connected into the communication conference, and was sitting in a room I hadn't seen before.

"It's good to see you, Daichi-kun! Sachiko-chan, I hope you're well."

"You too, Tou-san."

"Of course, Kohaku-sensei."

"Good, good. So. The quarterly update. Shall I do the usual?"

"I'll update you on Konoha, then we'll go through family updates, any new retainers, the military situation, an economic update, the progress projects including construction and any new issues?" I asked, and got a nod in reply. "Sounds good to me. I noticed you're in a new room?"

"That's right! Hawk's House was completed with the most recent set of construction seals, so we've started to furnish it. What do you think?"

"I like it. Not too opulent, but it looks comfortable and practical," I replied before getting to business. "Alright, we still need to do team training with Yasu, so I'll get started. I assume you got the most recent shipment?"

"That's right. Thank you; I know how boring making those seals must be for you."

"It's not too bad. I get to practice my chakra scribing technique, so at least it's not a total waste. Anyway, what else is there… our training is going well. Everyone's healthy. I'm almost done with the automatic sword-sealer; that should hopefully be ready within the month, though it'll depend a bit on how much training and life interfere. And, well, hmm..." I paused as I pretended to be deep in thought, then cheekily finished "can't really think of anything else!"

"I feel sorry for you, Sachiko-chan, if my son tries to be funny with you too," he said joking at my neglecting to tell him if I passed my graduation exam and if the Hokage allowed my request for my retainers to make up my immediate genin-cell.

"It is a sacrifice necessary for my service, Kohaku-sensei," she replied in a deadpan before finishing it off with a classic ninja saying: "I endure." As if my humor were as bad as being tortured, or physically and mentally damaged. Tou-san burst into laughter, and with a big grin I spoke up.

"And see, Tou-san, Sachiko-chan's sense of humor continues to grow!"

"Yes, yes. Well done on breaking down your retainer, Daichi-kun. Now stop keeping an old man waiting."

"Alright, alright. Wouldn't want you to forget what we were talking about. So, we passed the Elite Genin Graduation Test, as if you expected any different. And Hokage-sama was kind enough to allow my retainers to serve in the same genin cell."

"Good. I know how much you like having Sachiko around especially; I'm glad she'll be able to continue to support you." I knew what he was insinuating, but even if we weren't in any way together, it was true; I'd have been miserable if Sachiko wasn't assigned to my group, and while Yasu was a bit more of a "quiet outdoors-type", he was familiar and comfortable. Funnily enough Sachiko, who normally insinuated such things with a totally matter-of-fact, everyday tone, had a faint blush.

"But that's pretty much it. So what's happening with you guys, on Hawk's Haven and in our little town?" I asked with a faint moue of displeasure when I said the name.

"OK. Well, as I'm sure Kaa-san told you last weekend, your little imouto turned two, and is getting into all sorts of mischief. This last week, she managed to get into Kaa-san's sealing supplies, and well, Kaa-san ended up having to get the wallpaper replaced. She was not pleased. I doubt little Ayumi-chan will make that mistake again. Other than that, everyone is in good health. Kaa-san passed her Expert Sealer's Exam, which she's been keeping kind of quiet; I've had to tell people on her behalf. I've also heard that Otou-sama is quietly bragging about your "contribution to improving the art of the sword" and is starting to equip his top retainers with your seal-blades."

His air quotes around that sentence were hilarious.

"Really? Well, I'll congratulate Kaa-san when we next speak. Expert Sealer's where things really get fun, too; she must be getting close to a mastery in her specialty. And as for Ojii-sama, tell him if he'd like to send a vial of his blood, I'll make him one with all the bells and whistles. It'll be fun to see what I can come up with to add on top of that…" I started to go into what I thought of as "sealing mind" as the possibilities came up, but Sachiko tapped me lightly under the table with her foot and I refocused. Truly she was the best minion. "Oh, and Sachiko, make a note to make another dozen blades, a mix of air and water, to go along with it."

"Other than that, some of the Clan elders are still on me to take on some concubines," he continued with a faint look of irritation. "You mother says she doesn't mind, and could use someone to help her gang up on me; I think she just wants some free baby-sitters."

"Well, there's no chance you could make someone as awesome as me," and how true that statement was "but I wouldn't mind having more siblings, even half siblings, if you wanted to, Tou-san. I won't be upset if Kaa-san is allowing it." And she'd have to be; she was technically the head of my family, not Tou-san, due to clan-law favoring sealers and Tou-san's spat with Ojii-sama all those years ago.

"Well, I'll tell you what I told them: I'll think about it when the situation in Wave is a bit more stable. It's not like I'm that old, the interfering busybodies." I laughed a bit at that.

"So, that was family. Now, onto retainers and vassals. They've been getting settled in at Hawk's Haven. You currently have eight samurai of good experience who have sworn themselves to you, as well as a round dozen of their apprentices; the three with families are settling in on the island, while the rest are off earning you points with the other Whirlpool military commanders. As for ninja, you're doing a bit better there; the collapse of Mist, and our own position have meant that a lot are attracted to us. As you know, you've got a full clan, if a somewhat small one, as vassals; the Matsuoka are up to thirty seven members, of whom eleven are combat capable. The independents and families are up to a total of twenty six ninja, of which there are fully four worthy of being jonin ranked and a good score of chunin. Four of those ninja are recent additions; they'll need blades – two water, an earth and a lightning. One of the ninja is from Uzushiogakure, and has his own Pelican; we'll need extra ammunition and fuel-seals, if possible" I nodded, and Sachiko made a note of this without even being asked.

"I've set the earth-user to work on the island, while the others are proving themselves with the combat group. And that ends the retainer update!"

"Militarily, we're doing very well. We finished installing your upgrades to the Cyclone defense system seals, and the sensor network is finally all up and running; there aren't any more gaps in coverage. I managed to get the island declared a permanent Whirlpool Naval Basing Site, mostly because of our harbor; at times we have up to five hundred workers, soldiers and sailors on the Island, and there's always at least a full century assigned to permanent duty. They've been building a permanent base, which is good for employment."

"That's good to hear; it's always best when your defenses are free, after all. Did you talk to the base commander about using our seal-work to reduce our taxes?"

"Yes, and the Navy's been quite happy to go for it. Our taxes have been halved for this year and the next; if we supply another five Pelican pilots with full equipment for light operations, they'll be forgiven entirely."

"Is it worth it?"

"Monetarily, not quite. But, there is an allowance for ammunition for training with the Pelicans, and our men will get more experience; it helps the island security too, and there are still the occasional left-over pirates."

"Do it, then. How are the private guards shaping up?"

"Pretty well. Apart from your retainers, we've got just over eighty sailors and a hundred and forty professional soldiers sworn to you. We've been focusing on training them up to work with our forces and operate Cyclone systems, as well as training more marines. We're expecting the fifth patrol-craft to be ready to be picked up from Uzushiogakure in another six weeks. The troops are on track to be able to operate as training cadre a year from now."

I smiled. That was significantly better than I had expected. "Excellent. Get them as trained up as possible; I want to announce the militia program whenever I can finally visit. It'll probably be another year or two though."

"That's fine. It's not a pressing priority, given all the changes that are happening. Shall we move to the financial update?"

"Lets. How are we doing?"

"Well, we're doing very well so far. The trading company you set up with Hikaru-san managed to expand our re-supply contracts with the various military forces, and the pair of patrol craft we've been using as escorts have proved sufficient to drive off any potential pirates. The income from the seal-blades keeps increasing, and the war was very good for royalties from the Cyclone Seals. The Pelican income is something, even if your cut isn't that large. The payments for your men working as mercenaries continues to improve as well. Even with your heavy investment into the island, and the recent purchase of the iron-mines, we'll show a significant profit, especially if we don't end up paying any taxes to Whirlpool. Our policy on low taxes is about to run out on the island too, so we'll see more income from that soon."

"Good. And the taxes will stay at that new level until I arrive; I'll announce the partial tax reduction for families with active Militia service. It'll help with morale and make them feel like they're earning the lower rate." Low taxes, eventually normalized – it was literally right out of Machiavelli's The Prince for pacifying recent conquests, and had worked out surprisingly well. Lowering them again in return for militia service was my own twist though.

"So cunning," he teased. "As for projects, well, I already mentioned your trading company. The most recent set of construction seals and finished materials finally got us keeping up with demand for things like sewers and pipes as you demanded in the "building code". The water-sanitation seals are up and running. We've gotten a recent shipment in of superior soybeans, rice and other staples, and will start planting in fall. The humidity-collection seals and the water-storage seals have proved effective, and the current crop is looking larger than normal due to the improved irrigation. Two new warehouses are still under construction, and one was just completed last week. The first expansion of the docks is finished as well."

"Wow, Tou-san. I'm impressed. How much am I paying you?" I wasn't paying him anything, and we both knew it; he was however drawing pay as the Military Governor's Deputy for the Island, but due to the size of the Island that was pretty negligible – only about as much as a military Captain without any active-combat bonus. In other words, barely enough to live off. Luckily he had incomes from his own lands, Kaa-san's income from selling seals, and rather large invested savings. The government pay was basically a rounding error.

"You know how much you're paying me," he answered with a smile.

"I do. Double it." He laughed out loud, and I smiled. "Alright. I'm glad you've managed to do such a good job with the island in such a short time. So. Now onto my favorite part. Issues."

"There isn't really anything that needs your attention, other than one problem."

"The insects."

"That's right. The area is just too large for standard anti-insect seals, and while we've spread them to every home, the workers are still having issues when outside. We've lost two to sickness already, even with the new clinic, and will lose more before the year's out."

I sighed. "Can you get Kaa-san to work on something for it? I'd do it myself, but I doubt I'll have the time. Tell her I'll give her a fortnight's stored chakra." That was a huge amount; enough to buy a half dozen Pelicans, or about the equivalent purchasing power of $200,000. Being an intelligently designed Jinchuriki had its benefits.

"I think she can focus on it for a time with that. Any ideas?"

"Nothing I'm sure of. Maybe something that detects and traps bugs the size of a mosquito or smaller, with a cyclically varying volume so it captures them, compresses the area, squishes them, then resets? That would be my first idea, at least. Or possibly a scanner paired with very weak directed light beams? See what she thinks."

"Will do. Alright, that's it then. Love you, Daichi-kun. Stay well, Sachiko-chan, and make sure to give my son all the trouble he can handle. Give my congratulations to Yasu-kun when you see him, and all of you enjoy the fruits of your progress."

"Love you too, Tou-san. Have fun on the island. We'll talk again soon."

"Thank you, Kohaku-sensei. I will follow your instructions," Sachiko replied with a bit of a grin. Tou-san's informality was definitely infectious; he could always get Sachiko to lighten up more than I could, which was totally unfair.

And with that, we went and fetched Yasu for some team training. Yasu was an interesting kid; he was one of those "quiet, watchful, calm" types, and loved to spend time out in the woods. He specialized in tracking, both as a sensor and using more traditional techniques, and was pretty skilled with camouflage and stealth, traps, and traditional ninja weapons like kunai and shuriken. He was decent with a sword, though Uncle and I were training him to be better. We got along pretty well, but he always preferred to watch me than actually interact with me, and was I think a bit intimidated sometimes so we weren't as good friends as I was with Sachiko.

Within the team, he mostly had a scout/rogue role, while I was the tank/artillery, and Sachiko was the misdirection/support, though she was good enough with water jutsu and a few combat oriented wind ones to play "tactical caster" when needed. She was also pretty damned amazing at espionage, but that wasn't really a combat task. Sachiko, who was then 17, and Yasu, who was 16, both had skills and bodies that could have easily qualified for Special Jonin. With their slowly developing sets of body-seals, which included DEWS, HUDs, and Cyclone seals as well as a genjutsu-defense I'd modified from the one designed for Bijuu, they had everything they needed to be jonin save for battle experience. Their seal-blades and custom Pelican summons were just icing on the cake.

Considering the weird mix of VIP and combat monster that I represented combined with my team's potential, I was very interested to find out what Sarutobi would have us doing, and who he would assign to be our team's Jonin-Sensei. By the time the end of the week came, I was legitimately exited to find out, and a bit impatient, so I was distracting myself by harassing Sachiko more than usual by trying to make her exhibit visible emotion, or find me new and interesting books to read or training exercises to practice.

After being so busy, downtime could actually be really difficult to deal with.

If you haven't seen it, you may enjoy checking out Badass. Set in Worm (a modern semi-gritty superhero story), and with elements from Fate and Badass of the Week, it's crack-taken-seriously, over-the-top pulp-fiction style violence with an overpowered protagonist, and banned on two other sites. Hell, even the light-hearted omake jokes in this were considered too subversive to persist.

Do note, backlog processed, so no more daily releases on Badass.

I've also begun posting another of my stories, Far Strider, onto RRL. Here's the synopsis:

A college student finds himself transported into a strange land with burgeoning magical powers, and is taken in by Ned Stark. Will he sink or swim in this medieval society, and will he ever get home?

OC-insert without knowledge of Game of Thrones, new planeswalker. Slow power ramp.

Second crossover: Star Wars (around chapter 39).

Currently releases daily.

Chapter 28: Meet and Greet

Finally, finally the day came and we were waiting in classroom with a bunch of other elite-track graduates. Our lead personal instructor, a mix of military-skills guidance-counselor and homeroom teacher, came in and we immediately stood at attention, bowed, then settled in our seats. We were in the Ninja Academy, after all, not some civilian school. The Instructor read out assignments from a sheet, and eventually came to ours.

"Uzumaki Daichi, Hisakawa Sachiko, Hisakawa Yasu. Congratulations, you're now Provisional Genin Team Seven under Jiraiya, the Toad Sage." I groaned. We just had to have that bastard. And Sachiko was most definitely not a kid anymore; she'd grown up to be quite the beauty, and I was just glad that she hadn't had anyone catch her eye yet. I might get into trouble if they disappeared after angering her, after all. But I should have guessed; Jiraiya had that whole "Child of Prophecy" fixation, and I was a likely candidate. Hell, it was possible I had already inadvertently fulfilled the prophecy.

After the names had all been read, Jonin-senseis started to show up and collect their charges. About five minutes into the frenzy, a fourteen year old Namikaze Minato walked in and called out for us, so we went over.

"Hi, Team Seven, commander Jonin Jiraiya?"

We nodded. "What is it, Namikaze-senpai?" I asked.

"Ah, Jiraiya-sensei said he was busy with research, and asked me to collect you." I shared a glance with Sachiko. We all started walking with Minato towards where the hot-springs were located. Why Jiraiya had a peeking fetish in a village that would have literally thrown as many girls at him as he could cum in was beyond me. Maybe it helped him get it up? In which case it was actually, in a weird way, fulfilling what one might see as Jiraiya's duty to Konohagakure.

Shaking the images out of my head, I refocused. As for Minato, so long as he kept his eyes off Sachiko, we would get along fine.

"So, did you two get reassigned or something?" Minato asked while motioning towards my retainers.

"No, they're my retainers; I got permission from Hokage-sama for us to all graduate together and for them to be on my team."

"Really? For how long have they been your retainers?"

I just sighed. "Namikaze-senpai, I am aware that you're a jonin, you know; congratulations on your promotion, by the way. But, I know Jiraiya-sensei was your sensei. I suspect you've read our files; I would have. You don't need to pretend not to know us."

At this he semi-nervously scratched the back of his head. "Wow. Haha. Well, um, sorry?"

"Like I said. No need to apologize." I smiled gently to take the sting out of the situation.

"So, what ninja subjects do you guys like most? I actually only looked at the first page – I thought any more would be rude, so I only have a very basic idea of your capabilities." If that was true then he needed to wise up.

I scratched my chin. "Now I'm interested in reading my own file to see what's there. Hmm. I like Seals."

"Really! I didn't see that in the file. Well, if you ever have questions, feel free to ask me!" He was trying so hard to be nice and helpful. I doubted he had many friends his age, so I felt a little bad for the short burst of laughter that escaped my lips.

"Ha! Sorry, Namikaze-senpai." He was looking a bit affronted, and Sachiko and Yasu were looking on in amusement. "It's just. You're probably what, level two? Level three maybe? I did hear you were a genius. But, I have a strong Uzumaki bloodline; I'm an Intuitive level five, a full High Expert." I was lying. I was an Intuitive level six, almost seven, and a fully accredited Low Master (no specialty). But that was classified to within the Sealing Department and Kazuo-sama alone, as was the identity of all non-public masters. Either way though, it hardly changed the ridiculousness of him offering assistance when I was at that level at the age of four.

He looked puzzled. "Level two? Level three? We don't use those. I passed the Konohagakure Sealing Corps' expert test though."

"We'll ask Jiraiya, but I'd bet that's about second or third level. Still very impressive, especially for someone who is so young and without any Uzumaki blood. You don't have any Uzumaki blood, do you?"

"I wouldn't know. I'm an orphan." He was visibly a bit bummed out at my put-down.

"Ah, my apologies, Namikaze-senpai."

"It's fine, it's fine. You can call me Minato too, you know. But if you're so good with seals, why didn't the Sealing Corps take you as an early graduate?"

Sachiko coughed lightly at his willingness to just jump into potentially awkward topics.

"Well, you probably saw that I'm on indefinite secondment to Konoha, right? I'm still a noble of the Whirlpool Court, and I'm not allowed to use or teach clan secrets without the right approval. I've actually been an expert since I arrived in Konoha when I was eight."

"Huh. So, did you have any problems at the academy? It's just, Jiraiya-sensei said you were another genius, and we might get along, so it's just been bugging me that you entered and exited at the normal times. Ah! Sorry, I didn't mean that to sound rude or anything." Awkward Minato was actually kind of endearing. He had a certain warmth to him, and to his chakra, almost a constant "I care" Presence. It was pretty interesting; I understood how he could be seen as charismatic. Even being all awkward, I wasn't pissed off with him.

"No, no, it's alright. You've clearly spent most of your time as a combat, rather than diplomatic or noble infiltration ninja. I just wanted to take all the electives that seemed interesting."

"Hahaha. Yes, my social skills aren't that trained. But were the electives really useful? I only took the ones my instructor guided me towards or that I thought I'd need in the future, so I'm interested in your take."

"Hmm… Some. And some might be useful in the future. The best one, I think, was the Advanced Battlefield Presence."

"Really, the Killing Intent class? But isn't that ineffective against stronger opponents?"

"Presence is much more than simple KI. It's good for a commander, since you can use it improve the morale of your forces. Were you there for the speech before the invasion of Water-country?"

"Yes," he replied a bit hesitantly.

"Do you remember how pumped up you were? Both Hokage-sama and I were using Presence to make our speeches better. In general, it can be used like a weaker but less intrusive genjutsu, which is good because I can only use aggressive offensive genjutsu."

"That sounds interesting. Maybe you can teach me some? And why can't you use genjutsu?"

"Sure. I suspect you were planning on continuing to train and work with Jiraiya-sensei, right? We'll probably be seeing a lot of each other. As for the genjutsu, I can use them. It's just that my chakra is so dense, any environmental genjutsu is really obvious, and my genjutsu are semi-permanent."

His eyes widened a bit. "That's both terrifying and inconvenient. I heard a rumor about that, but didn't know it was true. Well, we're here now, so I'll just get Jiraiya-sensei. I'll be back in a moment," he said as we reached a training ground near the hot-springs and Minato ran off to grab Jiraiya.

He arrived a few minutes later with Jiraiya, who was complaining about having to stop he research, in tow.

"Haaah…" he sighed. "Well, if I can't be doing research, might as well. Brat, Bigger Brat," he said before his eyes turned to the female of our group. "Sachiko-chan, it's so nice to you see you again, you've grown up well!" the bastard said to wind me up a bit.

"Ero-sensei. I trust you've been in good health, and I do so hope it continues," I replied drily with a semi-obvious threat. We were both just poking a bit of fun at each other though.

"Greetings, Jiraiya-sensei," came from Sachiko, while Yasu just raised an eyebrow and nodded. Minato, used to a far more serious approach to senior military officers, looked on in shock.

"Alright, kiddies, take a seat. You too, Minato-kun, if you're staying." We all dutifully sat on the grass, while Jiraiya remained standing.

"Allow me to introduce myself!" he began with his kabuki-introduction-dance. "I am the man that all women know, and all men wish to be! Renowned from East to West, North to South! The Mighty Toad Sage, The Hermit Jiraiya!" Minato barely reacted, used to his sensei's antics. I face-palmed, while Sachiko and Yasu were in shock.

"Alright, now you know who I am, so introduce yourselves!" he ordered with a clap. "Minato-kun, you can go first."

"Sure thing, sensei. I'm Jonin Namikaze Minato, fourteen years old. I like creating jutsu. I dislike mud. My biggest strength is my speed. My biggest weakness is my size and lack of experience. My goal for the future is to become the fastest ninja in the world."

Jiraiya nodded enthusiastically. "Good job, Minato, even if it wasn't as cool as mine. Next up, Sachiko-chan!"

"I'm a retainer to Daichi-sama, Genin Hisakawa Sachiko, seventeen years old. I like having a calm tea. I dislike lavender. My biggest strengths are genjutsu and court-infiltration. My biggest weakness is taijutsu. My goal for the future is to be an excellent retainer to Daichi-sama."

"You already are, Sachiko-chan, but thank you," I interjected with a grin.

"Urgh. Too sweet. You, the bigger brat, you're up," Jiraiya said with a scrunched-up face.

"I'm also a retainer to Daichi-sama, and Sachiko nee-san's cousin, Genin Hisakawa Yasu, sixteen years old. I like the forest. I dislike crowds. My biggest strengths are my stealth and tracking. My biggest weakness is my genjutsu and long range jutsu. My goal is to continue enjoying life, I guess." That was our Yasu. Loquacious to the extreme. I think that may have been the most I'd heard him speak at once, ever.

"Alright, good, good. Now, the littlest brat!" Jiraiya teased me about my height.

"I'm Genin Uzumaki Daichi Fuutaka. I'm also Consul to Konohagakure and vassal-Baron of the Fourth Rank of Seal-Hawk Harbor. I like coming up with new uses for seals. I dislike fatty foods. My biggest strength… Large scale destruction. My biggest weakness is an inability to use jutsu that require small amounts of chakra. My goal is a a long and full life for my family, retainers, and myself."

"A good goal. Now that we all know each other a bit better, let's talk about what happens next. Normally, there would be a test to see if you could work together as a team, but since you lot have been training together for years, that's not really needed. Instead, I'll be giving you a combat test to see how you do," he said seriously as he held out a bell. "To win, take this bell from me. Minato-kun will be watching from the sidelines, and will start the match. I'm pretty strong, so come with intent or you won't get anywhere. Understood?"

"Hai, Sensei!" we chorused. While Minato walked to the edge of the clearing, I turned to Sachiko and Yasu.

"Territorial Blitz, with a Dazzler opener," I told them using our hand-signs.

"Ready! Three, two, one, Start!" Minato called from the edge.

Immediately, we burst into action. I tossed a seal and yelled out "Dazzler out!" as we activated our protections. The Dazzler was the second generation seal to the Sparkler. It set off dozens of smaller flash-bangs (emphasis on the flash) in a wide area, each accompanied by a chakra wave to disrupt any sensors. A lot of experienced ninja knew how to deal with flashbangs; this wider volume version often took them by surprise at least once (and once is all you need). We had specific seals we could activate to protect our sight and hearing, so we could react faster.

While Jiraiya was recoiling from the explosion of sensations, Yasu tossed four seals attached to kunai out in a tetrahedron with the point in the air and the point of the triangular base on the ground behind Jiraiya, crying out: "Tetrahedron up!" as he made a hand-seal and activated the technique.

The Tetrahedron was one of a number of temporary seal-shields I made and gave to my teammates. Its role was to keep an enemy inside the range where they were sure to fall to my chains, or break larger enemy forces up so we could eliminate them piecemeal. By orienting the point of the technique behind the opponent, it bound their motion and made it difficult to dodge. The shield could be taken down and re-charged, and contained sufficient chakra to pin even Jiraiya long enough to take him out.

At the same time that Yasu was establishing the territory, Sachiko launched the distraction: a long series of nuisance genjutsu interspersed with shuriken poisoned with a numbing agent and DEWS shots dialed down to a painful "sunburn" level for training and using a visual burst of light. Meanwhile, I shucked the top of my outfit, allowing it to settle around my waist while I launched a massive number of thread-thin chains, filling the whole area except for that around my retainers.

Jiraiya instinctively dodged when the tag went off, and demonstrated just why he was so feared while avoiding Sachiko's assault and breaking her genjutsu, taking only a few glancing shots as he began to have to deal with my capture threads. Individually weak enough to be broken, Jiraiya was quickly covered in enough that escape was impossible, and slowly wrapped up until he was totally incapable of moving. As Minato watched on with an open mouth through the faint blue color of the Tetrahedron, I sauntered up, smiling, and took the bell then released Jiraiya.

"That was fun, Jiraiya-sensei!" I said with a shit-eating grin. "Wanna do it again?"

He laughed and clapped his hands. "I can tell this team is going to be a lot of fun," he proclaimed with a broad smile.

Chapter 29: Impatience

I managed to last two D-rank missions before I was fed up with them. The Hokage, or possibly one of his shadow clones, would often sit in the mission office, doing paperwork or whatever during the mornings, and would sometimes give out missions. As Jiraiya was our sensei, he'd typically go over to say hello, and end up picking up a mission for us in the process. The D-ranks were insufferable. The first had us raking leaves. When I accomplished this in moments with a finely controlled wind jutsu, Jiraiya re-scattered them, and told us it would be character building to do it the way all the other genin had to.

I almost screamed. I hated the term "character building". It was most typically used when people wanted you to do something unpleasant for their own amusement, and couldn't think of an even halfway decent reason. For me, it was even more pointless; my character was strongly enough built to survive the pull of Hell, the lure of Heaven, the drive to Ascend, the peace of Unity and the nothingness of the Void. There was no way that several hours spent raking leaves for pay I didn't need when I had a thousand and one things I'd rather do, things that were far more important, was worth it.

Part of my frustration was, admittedly, concerning one of these other tasks of mine; the automated seal-printer for the seal-swords was a failure. It actually worked, but only technically; the printer and the scanner that decided on seal placement in particular were far too inefficient. It took an already chakra-intensive process and made it an order of magnitude worse. While this was annoying, what was worse was that it meant I needed some new, more clever way of solving the problem. It put me back months of work, and left the project with all its projected profits in limbo.

So, the third day we went in to get a D-rank, I spoke up.

"Am I allowed to request myself for a D-rank, Hokage-sama? Because I have my own boring tasks that need to be done, and my time is worth more than D-ranks." Sarutobi grinned while Jiraiya grumbled and forked over a small handful of notes. They'd apparently been betting on how long it would take me to flip and give a good enough reason to not do any more D-ranks. And so in return for a relatively minor fee, our team spent the time normally given to D-ranks on personal pursuits, while the rest of the day was for team training.

Team training was actually much harder in some ways than it would have been with regular genin. Sachiko, Yasu and I were a well honed unit, and unused to working with Jiraiya who had his own method of doing things. Also, while Jiraiya was still much stronger, and a fair bit faster than I (especially when using sage-mode), I actually had the edge in massive, area-destroying jutsu that he normally provided, and of course I was better with seals. The third component of his combat style, the trickster/stealth type combat he sometimes used wasn't something we could fit into. Figuring out where he'd fit inside our attacks and formations was a pain that was only made worse when Minato was around.

Minato was kind of funny. He wasn't quite sure whether he wanted to be friends with me or not. On the one hand, he was a genius and enjoyed spending time around someone as bright as he was. On the other, the fact that I was a genin, younger than he, and more advanced in several fields made him a bit jealous; it was the first time he'd really been shown up by someone his age, and he was one of those people who found it much easier to magnanimous in victory than defeat. There was also a tinge of "having made it" by achieving jonin rank, and the fact that I obviously didn't care rankled.

That was further confused by the awkward situation where he outranked me socially as a jonin, but I outranked him as a lord. I found it hilarious to further confuse him over the situation, and alternatively wind him up then get him liking me again. He'd retreat from the situation, confused, then come back hours or days later; it totally cracked me up. Jiraiya knew what I was doing, but knew I wasn't the type to take it too far, and that it was good for Minato's social development, so he let it be.

Over time, our teamwork settled out. We were something of an odd team, since we didn't have any particular specialty. We weren't a team built for wide scale destruction; I had that kind of firepower (as did Jiraiya, for that matter), but my team-mates didn't (unless we were using Pelicans, but that was totally different). We weren't built for tracking; Yasu could probably track the average chunin, but not those specializing in stealth in the wilds. Stealth? Yasu could sneak with the best of them, and Sachiko could blend into any noble palace, but I stood out a bit. Further, we were the last team they could send on highly questionable operations; it would have been a diplomatic incident in the making, and it was a poor idea to subject a Jinchuriki to high mental stress, especially when they were capable of what I could do even at age twelve.

If anything, we were closest to being a diplomatic team, but couldn't really do that for Konohagakure since I was linked so strongly to Uzushiogakure. On the other hand, we could do pretty much any mission at least as well as a solid chunin team, and didn't have any real weaknesses; we should survive any opposition that wasn't put together to specifically hunt us. So long as Jiraiya was along, we could face anyone up to Kage level with at least the possibility of success. Further, with my long range communications seals from Uzushio, we could stay in contact with both Whirlpool and Konohagakure. We were perfectly suited to be roving troubleshooters who would go out of the village, keep taking missions, and only come back after every six months or so.

While our teamwork was settling out, things were getting a bit more tense. In the West, the conflict between Suna, backed somewhat quietly by Wind, and Iwa, backed somewhat quietly by Earth, had settled down into a brutal, pointless conflict that was slowly grinding down ninja and civilians on both sides. As far as Konoha was concerned, that was excellent.

Lightning though had mostly consolidated after their losses. They had accepted the loss of influence in the lands of Frost and Hot Springs, not that they could do much else; Kumo had always been feared more for their personal might, brutality, and underhanded cunning than their subtlety or convincing political machinations. Then they had weathered the raids from Water-country pirates that were displaced or wise enough to remain but avoid attacking any shipping that the Whirlpool government actually cared about.

While Whirlpool and Lightning were no longer in conflict, there was still a serious feeling of bad blood, and such piracy was at least tolerated; I know that my own trading company had passed on intelligence on some of our potential competitors from Lightning. But with the situation stabilizing at home, Kumogakure was back to making mischief in the North-East. Konohagakure had had to shift more forces in that direction, and was still under-staffed due to their nearly-completed obligations towards Uzushiogakure.

And so it was that we got our first C-rank of many. We were being sent to a town called Okutari, about halfway between Konohagakure and the border of Hot Springs Country. It was well positioned in case we had to reinforce the border ourselves, and the space needed some ninja teams. The local area had been most depleted of ninja due to the shifts necessitated by Kumo's actions; there was apparently a criminal surge there, including a local slaving group which had kidnapped the wrong noble's daughter. She had been ransomed back, but we were expected to hunt the organization down and break it for the dishonor. While the difficulty was "C-rank", it actually paid enough for several c-rank missions, depending on which objectives we succeeded at, and had a large expense account. I had no issues with the mission, as I hated the concept of slavers, and so my team had no problems with the mission.

Because there was little immediate urgency in the mission and we were expecting a six-month posting to the region, we were given a day to gather supplies and pack. I notified the Consulate and Whirlpool of where we'd be, and arranged with the smiths I'd been working with to send the unsealed swords on to Konoha's outpost in Okutari so I could finish them as I had time. I then packed up my entire workshop, including the protections, in case we had enough down-time for me to work elsewhere. We said our goodbyes to Auntie and Uncle, and had a leaving feast. The next morning, bright and early, we left with a hung-over Jiraiya in tow; apparently he had been availing himself of the ladies before leaving.

The trip was uneventful; it lasted two days, but we didn't run into anything particularly interesting or stop at any villages or towns along the way. Arriving at Okutari was very interesting. The town was on the river, and served as the center for both the region's farming and the river-trade, much of it local rice and sake on river-barges bound for other areas. I'd never really been in a place like that before, somewhere that focused on civilians. I'd grown up in Uzushiogakure, and apart from a brief visit to the noble quarter of Keishi, Fire Country's capital, I'd spent the remainder of my time in Konohagakure. None of those places were ones that really focused on everyday civilian life in the Elemental Countries, and it was pretty interesting.

The town had a wall around it, but without the seal-defenses of Konohagakure or any great height; it was more to restrict transit and ensure taxes were collected, all under the banner of "protecting against bandits" and "wild animals". The village guard, apart from a detachment of the Daimyo's Army, were little better than armed civilians, and very few in the village had any notable chakra presence. The people wore more traditional clothing, and interacted much more like how I'd imagine late medieval Japanese peasants acted than the more modern Uzushiogakure or unconventional social evolution of Konohagakure. The buildings were shorter, and less sturdily built. For all of that, the area was clearly prosperous; there were few poor or beggars, the houses were well maintained, people seemed decently fed and clothed. Yet there were villains lurking in the shadows, and we were there to hunt them.

For that purpose, we were acting certain parts. Jiraiya had had us decide on them, mostly as a training exercise. Sachiko, as our infiltration specialist, assigned the roles. I, being the most difficult to hide, was a young noble heir. Jiraiya was a senior guard sent to ensure my safety, and Yasu was his apprentice. Sachiko was my maid. Since we were potentially going to try and go after these slavers as buyers, she had also insisted on pretending to be my "toy". I protested, but lost the argument.

Jiraiya's transformation was the most surprising; I had never really seen him with his game-face on for an infiltration mission. But a bit of dye, a change in posture, add a spear and some armor and I might have thought him a middle-aged guard had I not known better. Sachiko at least I already knew as a consummate actress, though this did not help me overmuch.

Sachiko's transformation was the most disturbing; even though I knew she was only acting, her beaten-down submission had me upset. It got worse as I became more irritated. She, fully playing the role, would flinch at my irritation, stammer apologies and the like, and I would just get more wound up. Eventually it came to something of a head, and I almost killed a decent man for involving himself.

It was the early afternoon, and after touring around the city for a few hours I was ready to snap. We had been inspecting stalls, listening to conversations in tea-shops, and chatting to merchants about the local entertainments; all the while, Sachiko's act had been getting to me more and more. By this point I was visibly annoyed. We were walking down one of the main streets on the way to one of the nicer inns in the town, suitable for someone like who I was pretending to be and apparently with luxuries that a young man might desire; it was the same inn that the noble's daughter had stayed at, and we were hoping there was some seedy connection we might uncover. Then a man decided to interject himself; he was dressed like a wealthy farmer, or perhaps a smith, visibly strong from a lifetime of work, and both more foolish and luckier than he ever realized.

He was likely a man wealthy enough that he never really had trouble with the law, and the town was independent so it had no standing lords or samurai he had to fear. A man that strong, in a place without people trained to wield chakra might have a seriously inflated sense of power. And he was a decent man.

In the end, that was what saved his life. He was a decent man without a sense of his own power, who wanted to save a pretty girl, from a town where many young girls were likely going missing.

He entered the scene right after Sachiko flinched (yet again) as my frowning visage passed over her. We were all, of course, using false names from one of the many, many seemingly legitimate cover identities we had established, but I neither remember which names we were using nor really care; for sake of convenience, I'll use our regular names.

"Hey, girl, you alright there?" the man called out, rising from a street-side bar with a trio of his similarly large friends. By the scars on one's knuckles and the broken nose of another, they were no strangers to the occasional brawl either, and it looked like they'd already had a few. "You're not having any trouble, are you? Cause if you are, me and the boys would be happy to help."

Annoyed by the day I'd been having, and without really thinking about it I steeped forward, closing the distance to one where I could kill with an opening technique of my Iaijutsu, my feet already positioned. In my mind, it was to protect Sachiko, but I wasn't really thinking about it. Merely, I was stressed to the point that my trained responses were starting to take over.

"My servant is fine. We don't require any assistance from you." I stated, remembering just in time to call her my servant rather than my retainer.

"That so, boyo? She doesn't look so fine. Looks a bit skittish in fact. So why don't you let her tell me she's fine, eh?"

I snarled a bit at this.

"Sachiko, answer the man," Jiraiya gruffly ordered, wanting to prevent a blood-bath.

"I thank you, sir, but as my master said, I am fine," Sachiko replied hesitantly.

"That so. You don't sound too sure. How long you been in service to these?" By this point, I was actively restraining myself from unleashing my Presence. Only the fact that it would have meant my irritation was for nothing and I'd possibly blown the mission, allowing slavers to escape, helped me keep it together. Sachiko looked at me for permission to answer, and after a moment I gave a curt nod.

"I have been in service to Master's family all my life, sir." At this, they seemed to deflate a bit, and I turned and began to leave as they muttered to each other.

"Jiraiya, Yasu, Sachiko. Come." I ordered curtly as they followed after me. Far too soon though I heard running feet behind us, and as I turned, I saw the man coming up again.

"Hey, girlie. If you ever want to leave your master, search me out, ok?" I'd had enough by now. I was close enough, and without really thinking about it, my left hand positioned Red Night's Sky for the draw as my right hand moved slowly into position over the hilt.

I wasn't still not sure what I would have done. Whether I would have drawn and left a light cut, or taken a hand perhaps, or just killed him. Whatever my intention, Sachiko decided to distract me, and pretended to trip into a merchant's stall, knocking some wares to the ground.

She bowed, and apologized to merchant and to me as she gathered them up, and I closed my eyes and regained my equilibrium.

"I apologize Master. Will you be punishing me when we get to the Inn?" The statement was strange enough coming from her, and had that familiar overtone of possible sexual implication; it helped me regain equilibrium. I lightly snorted, and replied.

"Of course. Your clumsiness practically demands it," I drawled. When the man made as if to speak again, he realized that a rather larger, and scarier, Jiraiya was already at his side, and had begun to squeeze his shoulder enough to cause real bruising.

"I think you should go back to your drinking, sir. Wouldn't want to have an accident, would we?" he asked menacingly, using a tiny fraction of presence to do so. The man shook his head mutely and with a push from Jiraiya returned back to his friends and left.

When we finally arrived at the Inn, I went immediately to our suites and sat down on the bed in my bedroom. Sachiko came up moments later, moving like herself, and silently pulled me into a hug, a rare action for her.

"I'm sorry that was so hard on you, Daichi-sama."

"I was just so pissed off. I didn't like seeing you like that. And the thought of someone doing those things to you..." I said quietly as I sat next to her at the edge of the bed and rested my head on her shoulder, my arm around her waist.

"I know."

"I've told you this before. But seriously, Sachiko-chan, if there's ever anything I'm doing that you disagree with, or something you think I should do or would like from me, I want you to tell me. You've been with me for a long time, and are important to me." She gave a soft, happy smile at this and blushed prettily.

"I will. Thank you, Daichi-sama." And in that moment, as I sat next to her, and breathed in the subtle floral scent of her perfume, and felt the soft curve of her flank, I realized I had far more problems than just this mission, and my emotions at seeing Sachiko acting like I was cruel to her.

It seemed that I was finally entering sexual puberty. And I was attracted to Sachiko. This was a recipe for disaster.

As soon as you hit a certain stage in your physical development, you become interested in sex. This is bad enough the first time around. While sex is this awesome, amazing thing you really want to try, that must be way better than simply jacking off, you don't really know what it is, how it looks, how it feels, all the foreplay and post-coital cuddling. You have an idea, but no true concept of the experience. So, while you want it, badly, and build it up in your mind, hugely, it is a distant dream rather than an achievable reality.

The second time around through puberty is worse. Sex is no mystery. It may not be as awesome as you hoped, when you were first a virgin, but it's still pretty damned awesome. And it's far, far more concrete. You know what sex is, the many forms it takes and games that surround it. And you just fucking want it. Puberty messes with your hormones so much that you're basically a horn-dog willing to fuck anything that moves, and many things that don't - and that's without knowing what sex even really is. With that knowledge, it's a hundred times worse.

Seriously, if there were any issue with this reincarnation business, it would be going through puberty multiple times.

Puberty's pretty sneaky too. Before you're aware of wanting sex that first time (again), you're almost like how I would imagine a recovered alcoholic is. Inside their home, having avoided the sight or scent of alcohol for months, they're fine. Then they're at a party, they see a drink, and they just want it.

It was the same for me. As soon as I thought of sex with Sachiko, dear god but I wanted her. Screw the five years difference, the fact she was my retainer and basically incapable of actually consenting, all the high thoughts I had had about her and not treating her the way so many other little shits treated their retainers. I just wanted to screw her. Going back to the alcoholic analogy, it was like being followed by an open bar. Constant, easy temptation just a few feet away.

I had no idea how I was going to deal with it, as well as starting a mission involving flesh peddlers while dealing with this. I barely made it through dinner, and almost couldn't stand looking at Sachiko's face for fear that my thoughts would somehow be transmitted. She seemed a bit perplexed at my behavior, though I think Jiraiya knew what was going on. Yasu I could never really get a read off of, unless I was actively and deeply sensing his chakra, which required more focus than I could spare in that state.

After dinner, as I lay in my bed in pajamas after a bath, I was thinking of this very problem when I heard a knock on the door.

Chapter 30: Interlude 4: Problems

Sachiko realized when she was fourteen that she had problems. She had always been protective of her master, as was proper. And she had been highly impressed by her master too; he was so strong and driven, and she had been taught to value strength and drive. But that was before her master had revealed himself to her while practicing with Presence.

She realized then that whatever he was, her master was greater than any human she'd ever met. She didn't think he realized how much he had revealed, but even so, it was impossible for someone so young to have so much depth to their self. She didn't think it was possible for anything less than a god to be like that.

It wasn't just a matter of power, though her master had that to spare. No, it was a matter of depth, of conceptual weight, of intrinsic identity. Even as a child – if such a word even had meaning to an entity such as her master – her master's sheer Presence was enough to give pause to even the greatest of ninja. But despite her suspicions her master was not a god; he had said so, and her master had never lied to her.

If not a god though, he was still certainly something far greater than merely human.

After that, she began feeling more than just respect for her master. Adoration. Worship. She wasn't sure what the right word was. As a proper kunoichi, her master was already her lord and master. But after she grew to understand that facet of him (not all of it, no, she was not capable, but even just that sliver that her paltry abilities allowed) he was so much more.

She knew she was unworthy, but that he valued her anyways, and the sheer honor of that, of having someone like her master valuing her, and not just as a tool... That was a heady thing. She understood what her family had done to her, as a child. What they had had done to them decades ago in turn. What she may yet do to any future children of her own.

She had been shaped to serve. And not just to serve someone worthy, no, she had been shaped to serve whoever she must. A degree of fanaticism in one such as her was expected, especially if the one she served was in fact worthy of her loyalty. But combining that conditioning with a being like her master... it was no surprise how devoted she had become.

She didn't really realize how bad it had gotten until she started planning how to kill the useless scum (unworthy) masquerading as kunoichi that would approach him, bother him. Then, forced to acknowledge her feelings, she realized that it went beyond simple adoration, or worship.

She loved him. She loved him the way a priest might love their god. She loved him the way a retainer might love their lord. She loved him the way one might love their best friend. And in time, if he allowed it, she might grow to love him further.

But, at the time, he was too young. So, her fantasies remained just that. Fantasies. And she had so many. Of his requesting her to help train "practical seduction" skills. Or his using her as she had been long-ago warned may happen, or perhaps allowing her liberties as a reward for some great service.

It may not have been proper for a retainer, let alone the servant of one so high (even just accounting his political rank). But it was what it was, and as a ninja she had been trained to accept reality.

She was not jealous. She knew that he would have others, which was only right. If nothing else he was an Uzumaki noble, and there were high hopes his ability with the Adamantine Chains, sealing, or even just chakra manipulation might breed true. Uzushio would doubtless press as many concubines on him as he was willing to accept, and whoever he eventually took to wife would be of the loftiest station.

So be it. She just wanted whatever he might be willing to give, and fantasized about getting what she wanted. So she grew, and he grew, and she maintained herself on the insubstantial dreams of fantasy. And she made her decision.

She knew her master better than anyone else living, and she knew that in time he would be able to accept her. And so, she waited for that day, and planned what she would say, how she would shift reality to become the fantasy and turn dream into practicality. For all her lord's wisdom and power, he had always been somewhat vulnerable to lighter forms of soft manipulation. And those techniques which she had used long ago to become his retainer would serve her well in her newer endeavor.

After that day (awaited so long), when he had had to pretend to be taking advantage of her, she realized that he was finally old enough to notice her. Honestly, she'd had a good bit of fun with it. Her master had always had a bit of a "white samurai," a somewhat impractical level of chivalry and kindness towards the subtler sex.

It taught her a valuable lesson too; though she thought that sort of role-play might be a good bit of fun, she realized she'd need to wait until any relationship was better established. She just hoped her lord would entertain her ideas in time. She had, after all, been saving herself in the once-distant hope that he'd eventually notice her, want her; it was inconceivable to her that he might want someone else's leavings, after all.

But equally she was a woman in full flower of youth, and it was well known that chakra training increased all forms of vitality. It was little surprise that she had turned to literature and titillating stories from the hot-springs. After all, suppose her master did want to get some hands-on training? She could hardly provide anything other than the best training possible; anything less than her best would just be dishonorable. Or at least so she reassured herself.

She was so filled with hope, and happiness, that one such as he would pay attention to her, the attention she so dearly desired. She almost couldn't go and actually talk to him.

Instead, she had had to lay down, and bite her lip so she might not be heard (but gently, so as to not leave a mark), and then after some minutes bathe herself before she left for his room.

It was the time to take the first step, of what she knew would be (hoped to be, had to be) many.

She just hoped she had judged the situation correctly.

She knocked on his door.

Chapter 31: Conversation

I heard a knock on the door.

"Come in," I called out.

Normally I'd have been more worried about an ambush, but we were in a suite where my room was behind those of my supposed guards and servant. If someone had gotten past Jiraiya without a ruckus I was already fucked; frankly, that was so unlikely as to be implausible.

The door, a sliding wood and paper screen, slid open and Sachiko came through looking worried.

"Hey Sachiko. What is it?" I asked.

She peeked up, then looked down at the floor again. By that point, I was a bit worried; maybe she had noticed my attraction and was upset, or didn't appreciate it, but was having the issues one might expect from a loyal retainer in that situation.

"I noticed that you seemed attracted to me today, Daichi-sama." Fuck. Well, I thought, nothing to do but apologize.

"I'm sorry Sachiko. I know that it might have been awkward. I promise I would never do anything unless you wanted me to." By that I meant to reassure, but from her shrinking into herself, that wasn't quite the case. "Sachiko, can you tell me what exactly is wrong? What I could do to make it right?"

"I want you to!" she blurted out.

I wasn't really expecting it to be what it turned out to be. I may have once been an adult, and doubtless if I were a third party looking on I'd have easily spotted the signs, but those things are always far harder for those inside the situation to understand. I overcomplicated things, wondering if signs were really what they appeared, or whether I was projecting my own hopes. Her general poker-face didn't help things either.

"I'm sorry?" I was too stunned to even process what she'd said, but she obviously took that as my needing extensive clarification. I was a bit oblivious, but not entirely stupid.

"I've wanted you to notice me for years, master. You have no idea how glad I was today, that you would be attracted to one like me." She was actually crying a bit.

I was in shock. I'd never seen Sachiko like this. Which made her technique all the more effective at getting under my skin. I never dealt well with people crying, women in particular.

"I know it was inappropriate my lord, that I'm not worthy. I'm so, so sorry for failing you like this." By now there was a bit of blubbering and her voice was broken in between sobs. Her emotions were a mess to my senses.

And then I had an idea. "Sachiko," I stated with a bit of bite to my voice. She looked up at me from behind her hair and tears with a worried face. "Come here." And after she slowly approached, I pulled her into a tight hug. When she hugged me back, I was pretty damned relieved. "Have a seat," I told her while pulling her down onto the bed next to me.

"So you've been attracted to me for years, huh?" I asked. She was still crying a bit, but was calming down and I wanted to both get more information and distract her.

"Yes, my lord. For about four years now. A few months after we moved to Konohagakure."

"Well, that's very flattering. Thanks," I said in a teasing tone.

That part of me that never stopped its logical analysis though was blaring in alarm. That was right around when we'd experimented with my Presence. I should never have exposed her to such mind-warping abilities. I'd had years to recover, and a will strong enough to properly face death in the first place, and that was still probably the single most defining experience I'd ever had. Even so watered down, done to a teenage mind…

On the other hand, it could have been the isolation. A continued form of imprinting onto her master. Picking a safe target for the affections of her budding body. Any number of factors, really.

"You shouldn't be surprised, master. There were after all enough of those fangirls," she snarked with a soft smile.

"Bah, like they count for anything," I grumbled. My views on the man-seekers was well known. "Though this does give new insight into why you were so focused on protecting me from them."

She blanched a bit, and looked down again. "I know it wasn't my place, master. And that you'll have others, and marry someone of much higher station than this one. But, still, master, I want you. I can accept anything, do anything, for you. Punish me for exceeding my station; just, I beg, don't reject me master," she said softly pleading.

"Please Sachiko, the begging is unnecessary. You know I wouldn't," I chided. This was a bit obvious of a manipulation, especially for her.

"If it would convince you, my lord, I am not above debasing myself," she replied with a half smile and a bit of humor in her tone.

"Don't. You know all I want from you is honesty. But I have to say, I'm glad you feel this way; I doubt I'd be able to give you up." At this her face was radiant, though still blotchy from her tears. She turned towards me, and buried her face into my chest, hugging me tightly.

"Thank you, Daichi-sama. Thank you, thank you." She drew herself back and without hesitation darted in and gave several rapid kisses to my mouth, staying in contact for a longer, more serious kiss with the last one. I was in shock, and kissed her back for five, ten, fifteen seconds before regaining my equilibrium and pulling away with a shit-eating grin.

"That was awesome. Thank you, Sachiko."

"That wasn't all I'd do, Daichi-sama," she said slyly.

"Urgh! I'm going to hate myself for this, but no. Not yet. It's far too early, and I'm still too young. We'll wait for that until I'm sixteen, alright?"

She gasped in protest and pinched my waist; it was half-way between painful and tickling, and very uncomfortable. "That's far too long!" Then, with a fox-like expression she arched her back a bit, showing off and pressing into my arm. "And besides, do you really want to wait that long?"

She had a point. It wasn't unusual for boys to be married at thirteen or fourteen; marriages among nobles could occur at even younger ages, though were rarely consummated until older. Sachiko herself was five years older than I, at least physically, and already well past the normative age for sexual activity there. Having her wait until twenty-one would, I reasoned, be unnecessarily cruel to her – and to me.

"Fine, fine!" I quickly capitulated. "But no earlier than my being fourteen, ok?"

She looked disappointed that I just had to laugh and pull her close.

"That's not to say we can't do other things. I'm happy to kiss, and play a bit, and have a lot of skinship. But that's it, ok?" I said mock sternly with a smile. That said, I was serious.

She looked up with a vulpine grin. "It's not what I want, but I've waited four years already just for this possibility. I can wait another year and a half. Though I hope you will forgive your poor servant testing your resolution, master." I laughed.

"So long as you don't go too far, and can forgive being disappointed by your stubborn master. Alright. It's late, and it's going to be hard enough getting to sleep as it is. We should go to bed."

When she began to get into my bed, I clarified. "Our own beds." She gave an exaggerated pout, and pulled her dressing-gown back into position.

"Fine, master. I won't tempt you tonight then," she replied while grinning and pouting. It was too damned cute.

"You already have, and I think you know it," I said chuckling. "So, anything else before you leave?"

She looked at me, and bit her lip a moment in thought before nodding in nervous resolution. "Yes. Would you close your eyes for a moment?"

I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. And, honestly, to benefit from whatever she was planning.

There was a rustle of cloth, and then a moment later she spoke again. "Alright, now open!"

I opened my eyes and saw quite the sight. She was posed provocatively, and though nothing critical was exposed, I could only have described her as barely wearing her nightgown; even that would have been generous.

It was odd. We trained together, went camping together, watched over each other waking and sleeping. We had seen each other in all varieties of dress and undress. But that moment was still so damned alluring.

I may have been staring with my mouth open.

She grinned. "So, master," she drawled huskily, "do you like what you see?"

I nodded dumbly, while she gave me a bright smile and quick hug. "Thank you, master! Sleep well!" and then she darted out of the room before I could recover. I shook my head, laughing at myself and the situation.

"You too, you minx," I mumbled. Outside my room I could sense her spin around before leaning her back against the wall and bringing up her clenched fists in victory. Her emotions were even more triumphant than my own.

I could barely sleep.

In retrospect, the young woman played me like a fiddle.

The morning after, while we were eating breakfast together, Jiraiya saw fit to make some commentary.

"So, I heard someone made a little late night visit?" he said. Sachiko looked up from her rice with what passed for shock on her face, while I spun my head to face toward him. Even Yasu seemed a bit interested and shocked.

"By your happiness the conversation went well. Congratulations, nee-san." Wow. Even Yasu was commenting. I was glad he was supportive.

"You know, Daichi, if you ever need any advice, I'm quite the expert," Jiraiya began to say with blasé indifference to my growing horror. "In fact, tell you what. I'll even help the first time to make sure..."

I was young and in lust. I was definitely feeling my oats and my general overprotectiveness was in full force.

"Ero-Jiraiya," I interrupted, my voice cold and controlled. "I'd be careful, or I'll put a blood-restriction seal somewhere you really don't appreciate it next time we spar." He blanched, and very quietly returned to his meal.

Chapter 32: Blooding

After we finished breakfast, one filled with little glances between Sachiko and I, Jiraiya felt it necessary to give us a warning.

"Remember your characters. We checked the room for listeners, but everything out there, you should assume we're being watched."

Urgh, I thought. I had no desire at the time to stop giving little flirty glances. Or to stop receiving them either.

After leaving the room, we went down to the main space of the inn. To give a bit of perspective, the inn was larger than a traditional bed and breakfast, or even what you'd think of as an inn for travelers from the middle ages. It was more like an ancient hotel, one of the big ones with clothes and jewelry shops, conference rooms, restaurants, bars and all other amenities one could need while on the move.

The one we were in focused on high-value clientele; large volume traders, wealthier landowners, government officials and the like. It was a place somewhat known for their secondary services too; you could get a dancer, musician, or more "intimate" entertainment. That wasn't too unusual; what was unusual was that the establishment was rumored to be accommodating even beyond that.

In short, it was the kind of place where they'd likely have contacts with the local branch of a flesh-peddling group, if only to replace their workers assigned to crueler clients, or those with particular tastes. The whole thing offended my sensibilities, and pissed me off something fierce.

I was never someone to categorically decry something like prostitution, so long as it was regulated to medically and legally protect both the workers and their clients. But children? Slavery? Non-consensual activities? Unfair systems designed to keep the prostitutes destitute? None of that was acceptable.

But I had a mission, so I channeled my anger and distaste. It wasn't hard to get back into the character of an obnoxious, demanding young noble shit.

We went down to the garden, and I rather demonstrably instructed Sachiko to "be of some use, and fetch me tea," while Jiraiya searched out the manager. Sachiko returned just ahead of the manager. In his full sight, I took a sip of the tea then threw the remainder in her face.

"What was that! How useless are you? Are the punishments insufficient? Should I sell you to someone capable of training you, you useless creature?" I berated her, all the while she apologized and cringed. Then I turned to Yasu. "Get her out of my sight. Keep her seiza to reflect on her failures until I return and correct her."

I doubted I'd have been able to do it the day before, but with our new developments in our relationship I actually found it far easier to separate the role I was playing from myself. Yasu grabbed her by the arm and dragged her off.

I turned to the manager. "I'll punish her for your embarrassment as well, Manager-san." One of the nice things about the language: you could address people by title instead of name.

"Ahahah, what embarrassment, sir? You were merely disciplining an unruly servant. I am sorry to have intruded. I hope you have been enjoying your stay."

"It's been quite decent, thank you," I said, though my expression was quite dissatisfied.

"Is there anything I could do to make it better?" he inquired unctuously.

"Well, I had heard that you provided full services? I was thinking of acquiring someone to play with. If I liked them enough, I might even replace my current servant. Her punishments just aren't having the same effect anymore."

"Of course sir, that can be arranged. Do you have any preferences? We can find several that fit your needs, then have them waiting for your inspection this evening."

"I'm not sure. I'm fairly discerning, you understand. Perhaps someone younger, so I might train them properly from the beginning, get them broken to my will before they are older and set in their ways? Would it be possible to speak with your supplier, and see their full inventory in the age of, shall we say ten to fifteen? I would be willing to double your usual cut to make up for the inconvenience."

"I'm not sure, sir, my suppliers are very private people..."

Well, let's see if more money is enough. To help things along, I gave the hand-signal for Sachiko, watching in hiding, to apply a minor trust genjutsu.

"Triple your usual cut then. And I may end up taking back more than one, so long as they have something worth it."

Between the genjutsu and the money, he was sold. "I should be able to do something, sir. Perhaps you might return at five in the afternoon, and we will see what we can manage."

"Excellent. We'll be here then." And so we left to do more snooping about town. Around two in the afternoon we returned and after our late lunch reviewed the folders on all the reported missing persons and the sketches done by the municipal police. If there were any of the girls there, we'd get them back.

Unfortunately, we were after the general organization, which we suspected had ties far beyond just Okutari. After all, you can't really sell people in the same area you took them from. We wanted the other centers, the transporters, the whole damned network. So while it would be cruel, we (more precisely I) would be marking as many as possible with a tracker seal and waiting until they reached their final destinations before launching a series of raids.

Sure enough, the afternoon rolled around and we had the meeting. We were taken to a warehouse district on the outskirts of the town, and then blindfolded. If we weren't trained for that sort of thing, it might have been enough, as it was I knew which warehouse's hidden basement we were led into, and where that entrance was even without scanning the area with my sensing.

Given the number of the people I was sensing, this was either a major hub or the criminal organization was larger and had more backing than we had realized. There were even chakra signals for a chunin accompanied by a pair of genin. I memorized all three, as they were likely among the priority targets with additional payouts as listed in our secondary objectives.

Finally, we were led into a rather nice room, and a full two dozen girls aged ten to fifteen were led in. Some, typically the youngest, had clearly not been broken yet, while others were mere shells, likely from repeated rapes, beatings, and drug or genjutsu applications. I wanted to kill everyone there. But, that wouldn't solve the problem, and it wouldn't complete the mission.

Instead, I went up and down the line, prodding and inspecting them, or at least that's what it looked like. Instead, when I pinched them or poked particularly hard, I'd mark them with a seal that I could remotely "ping" to get a location. The range wasn't that great, a bit under ten miles, but we had Pelicans to do the actual following; these had the latest station-keeping seals, and could actually maintain position based off of a beacon. If truly necessary we could follow as many as half a dozen different targets without even leaving the town.

I wished I could save all the girls, then, but as that wasn't possible, I went with the next best alternative, if one of the more difficult morally. I picked a girl to buy, one that was clearly a fighter from the marks on her. From the look in her eyes and the freshness of her marks she still hadn't been broken yet. We had the expense account for it, after all. She was younger, at a guess ten or eleven years old, and clearly didn't know whether to be relieved or whether she was going from the frying pan to the fire. We haggled before settling on a fairly exorbitant fee, then left the way we had come in before returning to the inn.

Over the next few days we watched while shipments of girls went off on a pair of river barges and a single land-caravan. All the while, we were building up a massive dossier on the organization and their activities; it was far larger than it could have been without at least some level of governmental coverage. It was likely a highly placed lord, or at the very least an influential bureaucrat, was involved. When we caught them, I was going to fucking break them whatever their political backing.

And, unlike many other ninja, I'd get away with it. My position as a samurai could be argued to demand it, in fact, and I fully planned to take advantage of those gaps within the law.

Finally, more than a week later, Jiraiya gave us the OK to launch the first attacks. The two river barges had traveled up and down the river before most of the girls scattered. We tracked the distribution points they went through, and communicated back to Konoha. The client after being informed of the extent of the rot had apparently expanded the mission parameters, hiring two other teams to hit those regions and track down whatever girls they could find. The land-caravan went to what we discovered to be a hidden bandit stronghold near Okutari. We thought it might be the main center for their operations in the area, and were planning to hit it after rolling up their people in Okutari itself.

Finally the time came. We launched the operation. First, we hit the warehouse. The fight itself was pretty unremarkable. Untrained thugs, no challenge. The experience though. The experience was one I would remember for all my lives.

People might talk about the look of it, the blood and such. It was possibly because of my experience with violence on TV, but the look wasn't actually that bad. Given the poor lighting and speed, it was a mess but not really any worse than horsing about while painting.

The smell... The smell of the blood and shit and piss. The smell was bad, but only afterwards, when I had time to take it in. Afterwards, for years, the smell was a definite memory trigger. But during the assault, I was so up on my adrenaline and focus, I never really noticed.

The taste was pretty fucking awful. Not noticing that the liquid on your lips was specks of your enemies' blood, and then unconsciously licking your lips and tasting the rust and iron and salt and realizing "oh shit, that's someone's blood, I hope to fuck my immune system is strong enough." Not a pleasant sensation, or a pleasant thought.

No, in the moment, the really unpleasant thing was the sound. The yells and screams and even begging weren't that bad. Again, I barely noticed it in the moment.

What was bad was the sounds of blades cutting through flesh. What was worse was the sound of metal on bone.

I had always been bothered by that sound, and then to be hearing it, feeling it transmitted through my blades into my hand, up my bones and then sinking into my brain. That was what I'd remember about my first kills the most. The sound of it.

And if you thought a wind blade might have sounded different, you'd be right. It sounded like a high-speed bone saw as it cut through limbs and necks and ribs and bodies. Even more hideous a sound than plain steel on bone. For years I'd shiver thinking back at those sounds, and I developed a far greater apathy to the sound of metal on bone than I'd had before.

There was a reason most ninja ended up at least partially insane.

The operation itself was highly successful. We had total-casualties for the enemy thugs, either killed or disabled, and captured the chunin and both genin as well as some fat fuck in a fancy outfit we figured might be a local boss. Until we could interrogate them properly, we kept the HVTs (high value targets) in prisoner scrolls. Jiraiya went to fetch the town guard while Sachiko, Yasu and I secured the scene, gathering any documents and treating the worse-off slaves. Soon enough the guard arrived and we passed off the prisoners and those we'd recently freed, then went off at best speed to the stronghold in the woods.

The stronghold was a semi-permanent camp set up inside a palisade surrounded by a ditch; it reminded me a bit like a motte-and-bailey, but without the motte or keep. Overall, we estimated forty to fifty bandits and a similar number of slaves.

If it weren't for the captives, I'd have destroyed the entire camp within seconds with something strategic. I was ready to be done with the business. As it was, we needed a close assault. We had identified a barracks for the slaves, and were expecting that a number of them were also in tents or huts as entertainment for their captors.

We decided to go in stealthily at night rather than push a full-court assault. Between my sensing, Yasu's sensing and spotting, and Sachiko's genjutsu we managed to sneak up and kill the sentries.

A stealth kill like that was actually not as simple as it sounds. There was a bit of technique to it. First I got really close. Then I grabbed the target around the neck with your left arm, almost as if I were going to put them in a choke hold, but twist their head up and to the left, leaving the throat nicely exposed. I slammed my knee, hard, into the base of their spine, and pulled them backwards, taking them off their balance. Then, with them stunned and unable to twist or resist, I slammed the knife home into the throat, and drag it up and out to the side, making sure to get all the major blood vessels.

If I could, I actually wanted to avoid cutting the windpipe; it made this bubbling hissing sound that was a bit of a giveaway. It wasn't loud, per se, just unnatural and could warn other sentries. The other thing to watch out for is that I didn't cut my own arm in the heat of the moment; that was part of what the partial-take-down helped with. It helped me position myself in the darkness and gave me the time to make sure of my knife's target. Had I lacked training, and worried about messing up with actually getting the blood-vessels, I could have taken a step back, extending the victim's body further, and then stabbed through the stomach, directing the wounds up towards the lungs and making sure to slice the diaphragm. There were other methods; going after the organs in the small of the back, for example, but the one above sufficed that night.

#KonohaChildren'sEducation, I thought darkly at the time.

With the sentries dead, we were able to go door to door and tent to tent in pairs. I worked with Sachiko and Yasu worked with Jiraiya. We didn't have the ability to take a whole load of prisoners; especially not without waking the encampment up, and risking the captives. It was bloody work, but it was almost unreal. Just, sleeping, then dead. Sleeping with a captive, then dead without her even noticing. Again, and again, and again.

Until eventually we came to the center of the camp and the estimated leader's tent. He didn't get the same quick kill as his fellows; he got a strong sedative injected into the neck, then a pillow pushed over his face until he passed out and could be restrained. We made another pass through the camp to make sure we didn't miss anything, then woke the captives and gathered them up away from the bodies.

The operation complete, it was time to find out who was profiting behind the scenes. I had asked for and received permission from Jiraiya to try out a new interrogation method. Back on Earth, a family friend was special forces, and at one point had talked about the differences in different interrogation ideologies. How the Americans tended to be very enthusiastic but ultimately unskilled; they were good at getting people to talk, but not so much at getting high quality information. The British typically excelled at longer-term, more mental interrogations that might take time, but carefully broke the subject and got all the information possible. But that the Israelis had some of the most interesting techniques from a scientific point of view, as well as timeliness and efficacy.

Apparently, the Israelis liked to use something called "shaking". Not nearly so terrifying a name as other techniques, right? The way that it worked was that they would take the subject, and either using a chair on a spring, or just holding them tightly by the collar, shake them so that their head was moving a lot. Kind of like a head-banger in a concert, except a bit more extreme and including a lateral motion that particularly rattled the brain.

The interesting thing was that this would cause symptoms similar to delirium and drunkenness. The disorientation was meant to be so intense that the subject would often think they were dreaming, or talking to their comrades rather than an interrogator. Best of all, the effect could take less than ten minutes to become effective, and caused little enough long term harm that it could either be repeated, or allow other interrogation methods later. Finally, it left no marks.

When I, thinking as a ninja, realized I might need to carry out the occasional field interrogation, I decided that that method might be an effective one, and so I had storage seal with a "Field Interrogation Station." It was basically a chair with a seal to shake the subject properly, with controlled intensity. That mission was to be the first actual live-test of my device, and I was interested to see how it would perform.

The backup plan was to use one of my overpowered genjutsu to make our prisoners believe and trust us. That was judged to have a greater risk of breaking their minds, though, hence it being the backup. Really, no one liked seeing me use genjutsu. It was just disturbing.

As for really good truth-sensing, we couldn't manage it. Even relatively pathetic ninja had too much control for a polygraph set-up to work. I had previously experimented with Sachiko and Yasu on how I might use touch-contact and my deep scans to watch the chakra-flow in the brain and try and detect when they were lying or telling the truth, but it turned out far too hard to get good baselines without much more study than I was willing to give the subject.

The shaking test proved highly successful. Within an hour, we had the leader of the bandit camp spilling his guts about all his most important contacts, and even got the name of the Provincial Police Commander running the corrupt guards and inspectors who had been helping the scum from the government's side.

I kept my promise, and used the nastiest interrogation genjutsu I had access to. It had just the right amount of pain to agonize and incapacitate, leaving the victim unable to even suicide properly. Said commander screamed for days until he died, but he gave us a list of everyone involved first. The autopsy wasn't sure what got him in the end, between a combination of infection after clawing out his own eyes, a lack of food or water, tension, and elevated heart rate from the pain.

The whole affair had been a nasty, dirty piece of business. But we were doing good work. That was important to me. I would live a long time; keeping myself steady mentally was a priority. It would be too easy to become monster rather than man if I wasn't careful, so I was wary of becoming too easy with immoral actions. Killing, in the right circumstances was fine, but supporting, or even tolerating real evil like that slavery was not.

Not when I could do something about it.

Looking back, I definitely lost my temper, and if I were to do it again I'd not have tortured the man to death. But I'd have dared anyone to look at the children we rescued and say it wasn't merited.

Our first C-rank a massive success, we returned to Okutari for a rest period before heading out on more missions.

Chapter 33: Armor Up

The eighteen months after our first C-rank passed quickly. We were kept fairly busy, and after our field promotion to chunin a couple months into running missions Jiraiya was recalled for other tasks. We didn't just run missions, of course; we furthered our training too. Sachiko, Yasu and I cross-trained each other in our specialties; their combat potential improved significantly with their increased skill in elemental jutsu due to my training. Yasu and I learned more about poisons and infiltration, while Sachiko and I went camping for a combined several months and would basically play advanced hide-and-seek with Yasu to improve our stealth and tracking skills.

We always lost. It kind of sucked.

Probably the biggest boost to our combat potential was through my sealing studies. After I finished the seal-sword creation seals a couple months into our deployment at Okutari, I turned my focus to Body-Seals. Body seals were one of the highest expressions of the art, and extensive body-seal sets were a hallmark of the elite retinues that surrounded Uzushiogakure's Master Sealers. While my youth and other focuses had prevented me from exploring those avenues before, I decided that with our increased combat tempo and the potential of meeting stronger foes in the future that we needed some edges.

I had a lot of political capital within the Sealing Department. My Cyclone and Pelican designs had saved Uzushiogakure, and catapulted Whirlpool into the ranks of the greatest nations of the day. I was in favor with the Priests, in part due to my actions concerning Kyubi (who was still, very annoyingly, in a coma). Hikaru jii-san had advanced to become the third highest ranking member of the department. Kaa-san had been instrumental in applying some of my ideas as to how to use variable shields to create a kind of jet engine; I received a lot of the credit, and the brand new Sea-Hawks under development at the time were slated to be the first aircraft to break the sound barrier in over a millenium (when they were eventually released as a production model, at least). The Peregrine and Osprey were both listed under my projects, though they were still on the drawing board, and I had designed a number of specialized munitions that were in reasonably heavy use. And not least, I was hailed as perhaps the greatest sealing genius, ever. So, when I finally decided to flex my political muscle there, it was relatively easy to get advanced Body-Seal arrays and armor designs.

I identified five major focuses for the armor. First, protection. This was accomplished by a variable-setting defense system that operated on passive and active levels. Passively, the seals could detect when the body's integrity was damaged, for example by being cut or burned, and apply a localized protection to reduce the severity of the damage. A knife might cut the skin, but wouldn't penetrate deeper unless there was tremendous force. That level of protection was always "on" unless specifically suppressed (for example, for medical procedures), and any suppression was on a timer to reset. Chakra conversion and sealing seals would even drain hostile chakra fields while applying the counter to the enemy's chakra. This was also fairly effective against genjutsu, especially when combined with the defenses reverse engineered from those against genjutsu and the sharingan given to the Sanbi and Kyubi. There was a store of medical chakra to accelerate healing in combat, and an automatically activated stasis seal and reverse summon directly to a hospital in case of near-fatal injury.

At higher levels, the armor had three possible settings. Setting one, minimal protection, focused on constant active armoring of essential areas, sort of like a mystical equivalent to Kevlar body armor. Setting two was an active defense system that added detecting and stopping incoming objects that were at high speed, as well as a more general protection. It had the option to release seals to absorb and contain incoming enemy jutsu as well, though stocks of anti-juts seals were limited. Setting three, designed to go toe to toe against the greatest threats for as long as the energy stores held out, was heavier armor, almost like a miniature Susanoo, combined with seals to automatically absorb incoming enemy jutsu, a localized chakra draining field and randomly pulsed area-genjutsu disruptor.

The second focus was on enhancing combat potential. There was an eye-aimed DEWS seal on the head, and each arm had the newest, high rate of fire version of the DEWS as well as a Cyclone Bullet Seal and a Cyclone Cannon Seal. The Cyclone Cannon Seal used a variable stack magazine that allowed the user to select which type of seal it fired, and was supplied with everything from flash-bangs and concussion rounds to Star-bursts and Gravity-Shear seals.

The armor in setting two or three gave a strength enhancement, and elemental chakra flow was also an option. There were storage spaces for kunai, senbon, poisons, a built in poison mister (again with variable magazine), attuned seal-swords and seal-knives, reservoirs of water for jutsu and spaces for the Pelicans and any future devices too. One of the other things that the armor allowed was for the user to drain stores of their own chakra back into themselves to keep fighting for longer. While it would eventually cause chakra coil strain and even damage, and they'd likely pay for it later, it could prove useful in the middle of a fight.

The third focus was on sensors and stealth. This included a full set of HUD enhancements for the eyes, communicator seals, and a tie in to the command and control channels for the Pelicans and any Cyclone Turrets in the area. The eye enhancements included UV, IR and chakra detection, and could adapt depending on lighting conditions, as well as limitation filter to prevent flash blindness. There were also analyzers for scents and liquids that could detect similarities to a known database of scents and poisons, as well as allowing the user to define new scents for tracking. There were volume enhancers and limitations to avoid deafening.

Stealth-wise, the user could activate a "stealth" mode that would suppress their chakra signature. Passively, it could restrict them down to any chakra output, though that would limit the armor and their own abilities. Actively, it used a variation of the void-shield to prevent chakra leaks, but that drained the energy stores pretty rapidly so it was only really useful when approaching a sentry to assassinate. There were also camouflage generators, and stores of vegetation from different climates to effectively unseal appropriate plant cover.

The fourth focus was on mobility. There was the option to eye or chakra designate a target for the kawarimi or body replacement jutsu, as well as a line-of-sight shunshin seal that the user could activate without having to use hand-signs. There were limited air-mobility seals that allowed the user to jump from any height, as well as simulate a jet-pack or do some mid-air movement. The energy drain was relatively high, and the speed insufficient for proper long range flight, but it did provide mobility options for things like assaulting or infiltrating fortresses. I had left places to install the Hiraishin variant I was working on, but that was a more complex project which I wasn't expecting to have finished any time soon.

The last focus was on the energy stores and deploying the armor itself. Conventionally, the seals that a regular set of Body-Seals used wouldn't be able to fit all of the functionality I wanted. The problem wasn't space on the body for seals, since they could be collapsed. The problem was that the chakra flow went through the user's chakra channels, and too high an output could fry them. So, the basic functionality and the command and control seals were part of the body, but a lot of seals, especially the higher level armor settings and the high energy DEWS were on pieces of metal that I had designed using techniques similar to those from my seal-swords.

It was a major breakthrough in Body-Sealing, and I gained a fair bit more renown and respect from the Sealing Department when I sent them my notes on how it could be used. As a result high ranking sealer retinues became much more dangerous.

For sealing the chakra itself, I used a seal array that would detect when the user's chakra hadn't increased for over an hour (ie, that they had full chakra), then it would drain a percent of the total reserves every ten minutes until the user was down to ninety percent of their previous chakra level. The chakra would be stored in a seal the Priests allowed me based on those designed to contain Bijuu; it didn't have a lot of the mental protections or the measures to prevent the chakra beasts from escaping the prison, but could store a phenomenal amount of chakra and was segregated to allow different types of chakra to be kept separate. There was a seal that could accept either chakra batteries or direct input from someone else, specifically so I could help them charge it by draining the Kyubi a bit faster than usual. There were also a number of conversion seals to convert and store the input chakra into the elemental forms needed for defensive or offensive purposes, as well as the medical chakra for healing.

The armor was mostly kept a secret from Konohagakure. The Hokage knew that my team-mates had Body-Seals, but not the extent to which it improved our combat abilities. I was, unfortunately, still developing too much physically to get my own Body Seals, but Hikaru jii-san had agreed to apply them when I was ready. But, I was much more suited to direct combat than my team-mates, and so I was very comforted by their improved protection and ability to lay on the damage even without a commensurate upgrade to myself.

Right around the time I finished designing and applying the armor system, the Sea-Hawk and Peregrines were released. The Sea-Hawk was basically an upgraded Pelican. It went about Mach 1.4, and had slightly superior stock sensors, a faster maneuvering system, and a couple extra slots for custom weapons like seeker-missiles or heavier munitions. The Sea-Hawk's main issue was that it consumed more chakra than the Pelican, and so was mainly suited for use by Chunin or above.

The Peregrine, on the other hand, was the smaller, stealthier cousin to the Pelican. With similar chakra requirements and higher speed but a smaller frame, shorter range, and fewer weapons, the Peregrine had finer sensors, could hover, and could attach itself to trees or other objects and fold in its wings for camouflage. It also had a genjutsu cloaking ability. The Peregrine had a somewhat higher mark-up due to the difficulty of the small, precision seals that were needed to fit everything onto the frame, but was highly suited to stealth and reconnaissance missions.

I even heard a story about a genin using it for a remote assassination of a rebel Jonin in Water-Country. He tracked the Jonin to a safe-house, folded the wings and used hover-mode to fly the Peregrine in through a window, down a hidden tunnel and up to the door of the Jonin's room. Then he used the sensors to find the heat signature of the sleeping Jonin, and shot him through the wall.

The Osprey, which was soon to be released, was the first two-driver craft. It had space for a pilot and a gunner/spotter, and was designed to loiter high above an area using sensors and communications to control the battlefield. It had several weapons that the gunner could use, including one that typically started off at "heavy ordinance", and filled the "heavy gunship" role pretty well. The sensors drained a fair bit of chakra though, and so it was mostly a Jonin or above device. I acquired three each of the Sea-Hawks and Peregrines, expanding our aerial options. I also built up my stockpile of Project Thor seals; I had enough to take out any five cities when we left Okutari, though I had never deployed any of them.

During that year and a half we were deployed in Okutari, the political situation largely stabilized itself. In the West, after Earth and Iwa gave up on their influence in Fang and Claw, their war against Wind and River country died down. Wind and River decided to go after Rain, thinking it would be relatively easy pickings without Earth Country ninja to help defend it; they were dead wrong, emphasis on the "dead". Hanzo showed why he was considered by many to be the strongest living shinobi, and slaughtered hundreds of enemy ninja himself before they managed to break contact.

Savaged, Suna and Hidden Valley went for a cease-fire, and Rain became even more isolationist than usual. Everyone was left licking their wounds and without the troops or will to continue fighting, though there were a number of resentments and pressure-points that would continue to simmer beneath the surface.

Along the borders of Fire Country, peace spread along with Fire's influence. Grass, Waterfall and Rice all signed significant trade and mutual-defense treaties with Fire Country, while Hotsprings came under Whirlpool's influence, as did the Land of Noodles. Frost maintained their neutrality, but instituted a Free-Trade program that proved very profitable. Altogether, the Fire Country - Whirlpool pact nations matched everyone else's forces combined (assuming Iron maintained its traditional neutrality).

Lightning wasn't terribly pleased by this, especially the events in Frost, and had stepped up the harassment and border skirmishes. Kumo's leader was an old bastard in love with combat, and Lightning's Daimyo was a young prick who was annoyed at how much influence Whirlpool had. It was a bad situation, but the return of the Konohagakure troops and retaliations that resulted in a number of "mysteriously missing" Lightning trade convoys quietened the situation down a bit. Lightning couldn't afford a real war, not with so much coastline and no way to counter Whirlpool's ships or aerial assets.

Within Water-Country, the Konohagakure troops had been drawn down and recalled, as had most of the Fire-Country Army. There was still one legion assigned to Whirlpool in return for a wing of Pelicans assigned to patrol Fire's borders and coast. The heavy recruitment of samurai and ninja had proved sufficient to deal with any lingering malcontents. Water-Country's new-found prosperity under lower taxes and greater freedoms went a long way to keeping the population happy and transfer their loyalties. Uzushiogakure had instituted an air-mail system at my behest, and was making a fortune on high-priced deliveries using sealing and Pelicans. It was good practice for the pilots, paid well, and improved internal trade too.

About six months into our stay in Okutari, Minato came to visit after taking a nearby mission, and brought along his new apprentice, Hatake Kakashi. Without his father's dishonor and death, Kakashi was far less obnoxious than I had expected. He still had a kind of "bratty but cute kid" vibe that would transform into "obnoxious brat" later on, due to his belief in his superiority for graduating so young and being so renowned as a "genius".

Oh, he was; don't get me wrong. He was a genius. But so was I, and so was Minato, and Sachiko and Yasu weren't slouches either. That kind of attitude in a ninja was pure foolishness, and Kakashi hadn't yet internalized that while "being ridiculously strong for a five year old" was impressive, and that he may be stronger than others were when they were five, none of that mattered. All that mattered was how strong he was compared to any other ninja, regardless of the circumstances, and he was still a genin level threat. Jiraiya would come check in on us every now and then too, which was nice. He was always amusing to banter with.

The reason our deployment to Okutari was coming to an end was that we were offered the option to take the Jonin's test. Konohagakure at the time also had a chunin's exam, which we had skipped due to our field promotions. There wasn't an international exam though, seeing as I'd prevented Uzushio's destruction and thus butterflied away the Shinobi World War whose peace would have caused it.

The jonin test actually had some overlap with the chunin exam; there was a week of somewhat extensive simulated missions, war-games, personal combat, skills and knowledge tests. Jonin candidates would play commanders, while chunin candidates would fill other roles. Finally you went in front of a board to be approved, made special jonin, or rejected. We had the skills, even if we were a bit light on experience, and my political status didn't hurt. I was expecting at least special jonin for all of us.

The coolest thing about the jonin exam was that it was in three months, time which we could take off for preparations. I'd previously requested a long leave to visit Hawk's Haven and my people whom I'd never seen. So Sachiko, Yasu and I were going on a vacation.


	4. c 34-44

Chapter 34: Birthday Celebrations

It was a two day run to the sea using best speed, and then another day on a Fast Courier-Boat. A Fast-Courier was a new type of ship which used recent advancements in aerial propulsion to create a water-jet engine capable of cruising at up to sixty mph, similar to cigarette boats on Earth. Chakra intensive and heavily armed, the boat was kept small to minimize the water-resistance and thus there were few comforts. This particular Fast-Courier was one of mine, or at least my trading company's; I had one carried on board some of my larger trading vessels. That way, it conserved chakra, but if any pirates were detected nearby they could be quickly engaged. At most, two FCBs would go with a large convoy, but it was sufficient protection given the speed and armament differences.

The sleeping arrangements though were more of the "get comfy together" variety than anything truly comfortable, but, luckily for us, it was just a day's journey. Sachiko and I spent the time getting some cuddling while relaxing; Yasu spent most of his time staring off at the horizon. I had always loved the water, and going fast on it; I decided I'd get my own Fast Courier, just for relaxing on, and maybe the occasional mission that took us to sea. The trip, taken during early summer, was a fairly perfect way to transition from mission mode to my lordly duties.

We finally arrived at Hawk's Haven, or to be more specific, at the docks at Seal-Hawk Harbor. Hawk's Haven was a small sized island of about five hundred square miles, a bit bigger than say Hong Kong. There were a little over forty thousand people living there, with about a quarter living in the main town and only significant port, Seal-Hawk Harbor. The rest tended to be fishermen, ship-builders, or workers in the local mines. There was sufficient croplands for the island, though only about half of it had been developed, with sheep and goats for meat. Seal-Hawk Harbor had been under a constant program of expansion since we'd taken charge, and was home to my trading company. There was a factory on the outskirts of the town for seal-sword production.

My home, the fortified complex that I'd had built was actually on the water, off to the side of the harbor. It made sense, as it let me have my greatest concentration of weapons prepared to defend my main asset; the port town. At it's tallest, the Nest (the name given to my home) was five stories, and it was an example of fairly typical Japanese fortifications if you ignored the seals. Between the main house and the surrounding homes and barracks, there was room for myself and my family, as well as up to two hundred servants, retainers and guards. There was docking space for one mid-sized ship and up to four patrol craft or fast couriers, of which one was occupied by a patrol craft and two by fast couriers. When we docked, we filled the last open space for smaller craft.

Tou-san was there to greet us, and after a relatively light dinner, and bows from my servants whom I'd never met, we went to bed. The general plan was that in the morning, and for the next couple days, I'd meet my retainers, take their oaths and basically hold court. Then, there would be a party for my fourteenth birthday, after which I would tour my holdings, inspect the guards, and similar flag-waving type events. About two weeks into the stay I would be announcing the new school and militia programs designed to get the population to eighty percent chakra use and at least basic military training for all over the age of eighteen.

It was exhausting. If it weren't for the fact that it was my duty, I totally wouldn't have done it. I had over a hundred and forty combat capable ninja and samurai under my banner, counting genin and samurai apprentices, and a further four hundred guardsmen. The ninja and samurai had families, many of whose oaths I also had to receive. Many of my troops were seconded to my trading company for ship protection, but there were still hundreds of oaths to take in, honors to grant, and rewards to be given. After three days of that, and the endless "Fuutaka-dono" and bowing and scraping and gawking at the young lord, I was ready for a real vacation. Still, it was my duty, and it meant a lot to the people that were willing to (if necessary) die at my command, so I sucked it up and got on with it.

Finally, the endless meetings were temporarily finished, and while the household scrambled to prepare for the hundreds of expected guests, I relaxed, caught up with family, sparred with Tou-san, and basically had a good time. Kaa-san and I talked about sealing, and I finally met my little sister, Ayumi-chan (who was still a total midget). It was nice, but a bit odd; I hadn't seen them in person for almost six years, and then there we were. It was almost easier to talk to them over a communicator than in person. But we all pressed through the awkwardness until everything felt right again.

Spoiler: "Lime"

The best part of my visit was definitely what happened on my birthday. The night before, I had gone to bed fairly early in anticipation of the celebration the next day. While it might sound like fun to have such a large party, as the over-lord of the region it was actually a fairly formal pain in the ass, more politics than fun. At midnight though I was woken up by someone coming into my room and turning the light seal onto a low setting.

Doing that kind of thing to someone with ninja training, well, it was lucky that I recognized my visitor as Sachiko.

"Sachiko, what are you doing? What time is it?"

"It's midnight, master. Happy birthday. As for what I'm doing, well, do you remember when you said that we wouldn't do certain trainings together until you were old enough? I'm here as part of that agreement, Daichi-sama."

It took a moment for that to sink in. On the one hand, was I ecstatic? Hell yes. We'd been cuddling and fooling about a bit for a while now, and it had taken a fairly prodigious level of willpower to resist going further.

On the other hand, I always hated getting woken up, even if the person doing so was a beauty dressed in a small, cute, pink sleeping-robe and looking for fun.

"And so you thought it was worth waking me up for your desires, Sachiko?" I asked with a relatively neutral tone. She immediately bowed her head, and I could sense a pang of guilt and self-loathing coming from her.

"I'm sorry master. Please forgive your foolish retainer." I snorted at this. She did have a bit of a self-confidence issue, at least as far as our relationship went. Despite living in the Elemental Nations for over a decade, I hadn't fully lost that modern, Earthlike view of romance and sex. But even the relatively advanced Uzushiogakure wasn't committed to the principle of equality the same way the West was. Especially not between people of different ranks.

"I didn't say I was upset, Sachiko. A combination of elated and a bit annoyed at most. So look up." When she did, showing her hope and excitement, I continued. "Now, if I remember, you said you'd done some advanced studying, hm?" I mused rhetorically. She swallowed.

Sachiko had adopted the viewpoint that the relationship between us would be partially training both of us, but most of all me; she wanted me to gain skill, find out what I wanted, what I was looking for in a partner and such for my future wife and harem. I think she did it for a few reasons. Partially, because she really did want what was best for me, and that justification helped overcome her (in her mind) "unworthiness." Plus, if I really were as inexperienced as I would have been without reincarnation, it would have been legitimately helpful. Part of her viewpoint as well though was to protect herself, to set her expectations and understanding of the situation so that if I did tire of her, or move onto a partner of greater status, that she wouldn't be as hurt as if she had as fully dedicated herself to me as a romantic partner.

And part of it was that she could tell I found it amusing when she talked about our relationship that way. I'd pretty quickly realized her own hang-ups due to the status difference, rationalized that, and then moved on. I was immortal, after all, and living in the moment, taking enjoyment from what I could, changing what I found distasteful, and accepting what I couldn't change were all necessary to live a long, happy immortality without going mad.

"Yes, Daichi-sama."

I winced a bit. "I really wish you wouldn't call me that at moments like this, Sachiko," I replied.

She looked up into my eyes. "I know. But I refuse to call you without the respect you deserve, Daichi-sama," she said quietly but firmly.

I sighed. "I could order you to call me Daichi, you know."

Her lips quirked. "But would it then have any meaning?"

We'd had the argument a dozen times if we'd had it once. It was pretty infuriating. But given the circumstances now…

"You know Sachiko, if you have a particular preference, you know I'm happy to accommodate you," I said sultrily, teasing her.

She blushed a bit, far more of a reaction than I could typically get from her, and bashfully swept at the floor with her foot. "I hadn't really thought about it, but maybe next time, if it pleases you, Daichi-sama?" she said softly, demurely, as if she were a total innocent.

She wasn't. I'd seen the books she liked, and they were enough to make me, a twenty-first century male, blush. I suspected she had a long-term plan how to if not corrupt (for Sachiko would never do such a thing to her precious master), at the least finagle me into being willing to try out some of the more extreme scenes, their pages dog-eared and binding cracked from how long she had dwelled on them.

"So what were you planning for tonight then?" I asked curiously.

She smiled and stepped forwards. "First, I thought I'd show you your present," she said. She let her robe fall from her shoulders, gathering along the floor. A ribbon wrapped around her, covering what a bikini might, tied in an artful bow at her pelvis.

I made a point of looking her over. "You're very beautiful, Sachiko." And she was. Medium sized but firm breasts, toned muscles, excellent bone structure. She showed all the selective breeding that went into a ninja retainer.

"Thank you," she said blushing a bit. "And now it's time to unwrap your present."

I first let my hands wander, tracing a few light scars from training and missions but avoiding the most erogenous zones, instead brushing her stomach, flanks, legs, and neck in between heated kisses. Finally, I let my hands wander to the dangling ends of the ribbon and was rewarded by a quick intake of breath.

Suffice to say, I very much enjoyed what came after I unwrapped my present.

It was strange to lose my virginity a second time. I definitely performed better than the first time, and I had much better expectations as to how much fun it would be. Sachiko blew those expectations out of the water. I don't know what other training manuals she read, or what exactly she did to practice, but the results were amazing. Nor, really, did I want to know; knowing how a magician performs a trick takes the magic out of it.

I made sure to memorize the night using my visual and physical sensation memorization reinforcement, and decided I needed a seal to be able to transfer memories. It would be pretty damned kinky for Sachiko to go through the events, then see it from my point of view. Moreover, I was certain she'd enjoy being able to appreciate the result of her efforts.

Chapter 35: Explanations

Actually, if I remembered the seal settings correctly, the Kyubi had a direct access to the physical sensations too!

I blanched and tensed at his growling voice, deep in some way beyond sound or feel; this tenseness prompted Sachiko to look at me.

"What is it, Daichi-sama?" I swallowed. This wasn't exactly how I'd intended to introduce myself to my tenant.

"I'm not the only one that woke up for this. It seems we managed to wake my guest too."

And if it weren't for something so enjoyable, you'd regret having done so, human.

Well, I thought, that's one way to soothe the savage beast.

"I'm glad you're not upset," I said aloud. "Give me a second, there's a seal to allow you to speak beyond your current, um, domicile." I activated the seal so that Sachiko might hear him. "I'm not sure what to call you; I know you are called the Kyubi, but I'm sure that the Sage of Six Paths named you. Is it perhaps Kurama-sama? And if not, may I know it?"

I wasn't sure how I knew it, but I could tell that the fox recoiled when I said Kurama.

"How did you know that?"

I glanced at Sachiko, then decided they might as well both know. "Alright. Sachiko, I think you've suspected something about me, that I'm a little better than a human should be. Kurama-sama, you have read-only access to those memories not related to sealing, which are protected by the Third Grandmaster's Protection, so you'd likely be able to find this in time. In short, while I'm human, I'm not really mortal anymore."

Well, to be more accurate, he had access to the memories stored in my body's brain and/or spiritual chakra field. Just, many of those memories referenced the fact that I had reincarnated, or had alien viewpoints because of the reincarnation. Not quite the same, but still enough for him to work it out.

"I knew it, Daichi-sama," Sachiko stated while drawing me a little closer to her.

"You don't seem to have any particular divinity beyond the strongest ninja though. I'd be able to tell." Even Kurama was distracted enough by my claim that he didn't seem to be reacting to his situation.

I shook my head. "I doubt you'd be able to tell. I didn't become immortal to Ascend or become a Bodhisattva. In my original life, I was dying. But I loved life too much, wanted to continue to experience it too much, and so I meditated and fasted and as I came to Death. The pull of Below. The lure of Above. The potential of Ascension and Divinity. The call to become part of the One. And the crushing presence of the Void. I passed through them all, and rejected them all. I achieved what I wanted. Immortality as a human, through reincarnation rather than life unending."

Was I worried that they would talk? Not really. Sachiko was scarily devoted; had I declared myself a god, she would have immediately declared herself my first priestess. As for Kurama, he generally disdained humanity, and could only communicate with my approval.

"Is that how you're so strong, master?" Sachiko asked.

I laughed. "No. This is only my second life, actually. I'm in my mid forties, if you count my previous life, and my old world didn't have chakra. I'll admit, I made chakra-powered versions of some things, but the technologies are totally different."

"Like here, before the fall..." mused Kurama. I nodded and made a note to myself; I'd have to ask more about that later. "This doesn't explain how you knew my name."

"Ah, well, that." I activated the highest level of the privacy seals over my room as I decided I may as well go with total disclosure. "See, there was a manga, and then an animated version of the future of this world, called Naruto. It was about a boy, born to Namikaze Minato and Uzumaki Kushina, living in Konohagakure. After the death of his mother, the previous Jinchuriki of the Kyubi, due to the attack of a man with the Mangekyo Sharingan, you, Kurama-sama, were enslaved again and set against Konohagakure. The Hokage, Minato, used a sacrificial summoning jutsu that called up Shinigami-sama to consume your yin-half and lock your yang-half into Naruto." I could feel Kurama recoil at this.

"What! That fucking Uchiha! That damn cockroach is still alive?" he roared. Sachiko and I winced.

"Kurama-sama, please, that was very loud. But yes, Madara is still alive. He's being manipulated by a being called Black Zetsu, a remnant of Kaguya, as part of some plot to capture all the Biju and allow her resurrection. At least, that was the case in the Manga; I have no idea how much it overlaps reality. I've been changing things too – Uzushio still stands. In fact, we're stronger than ever, having conquered Water-country. Before, we would have been destroyed."

Sachiko gasped. "The Battle of East Kaizoku Sea."

I nodded grimly. "Exactly. I think they had help from Konohagakure's Danzo and his Root to get past some of our seals, but yes. But, Kurama-sama, I should mention. We've given you a seal that prevents the Sharingan from being effective on you, and another seal that makes it impossible to seal you with something on the level of the seal that Mito used. As you have noticed, we have attempted to make your stay with me as comfortable as possible. The Uzumaki Sealers did not agree with Mito's actions; there was a reason she was effectively exiled by being married to the Senju. At the time we lacked the power to fight against Konoha and your continued imprisonment was a political necessity, for which I apologize. When I am near death I have been instructed to release you, if that meets with your approval." I could sense shock from the fox, changing into a puzzled optimism and contentment.

"Very well. It might be an amusing way to while away a few decades. But see that you release me, human!"

"Of course. Sachiko, you've been quiet. Are you alright?"

"Of course, master. I am honored that you trust me with this, and allowed me to become your retainer. Now I know how you just performed so well. It's really unfair you kept me from that due to 'age', master," she said while snuggling closer.

I grinned and laughed softly. I should have known. "Alright, it's late and I have a party tomorrow. Goodnight, Sachiko-chan, Kurama-sama."

"I will watch some of these memories, I think, and contemplating."

I nodded. "Of course, Kurama-sama, and if it pleases you, you may call me Daichi." I was perhaps a bit obsequious, but the entity was at least nearly godlike in power (I could barely channel enough chakra to account for what he passively emitted on a daily basis), and he was centuries my senior. A bit of politeness never hurt. "I'll be deactivating the communication seal. I wouldn't want to freak anyone out." I said as I did so.

Very well. I will tell you when I am ready to grace you with my words again, human.

"Goodnight, master."

Waking up the next morning was pretty great. Suffice to say, Sachiko had decided that the previous night was not my only birthday present.

When I asked her why, Sachiko grinned. "I want to please you, master." I just laughed and shook my head before pulling her into the shower where we fooled around for a bit before dressing formally for the day's celebrations.

My birthday was fairly tedious. Lots of meeting people, receiving gifts, a long banquet with endless toasts. I was glad when it was over and we could finally retire to my bedroom for a repeat of the previous night's activities.

The rest of the visit was fairly busy. I visited the seal-sword factory, and helped improve output. We opened up Hawk Haven Academy, and made attendance strongly encouraged (basically obligatory) for everyone aged four to fourteen. There were yearly tests; if you could pass the one for the year above, you didn't have to attend that class for that year. This option was mostly taken advantage of by some of the ninja and samurai families.

For everyone else, the goal was to have citizens with basic combat skills, unlocked chakra and an understanding of how to improve it, and basic math, language, and technical skills as well as an understanding of the law. Basic sealing was taught, and those with more potential could get further tutoring from Kaa-san. There were other, optional classes that happened, some only irregularly, ranging in everything from carpentry to offensive water jutsu.

Other than establishing the lower level Academy, we established specialist training departments for the Militia (part-timers), Guards (regulars), Specialists (ninja, sealers and samurai), Officers, and Sailors. The goal was to have the entire next generation go through the militia course, which could funnel those with a particular inclination into the Guards or even Specialist units. I could afford to have them all well-equipped.

The initial training for the Militia focused mostly on basic personal combat skills, as well as providing logistical support to the Guards, territorial-defense, and guerrilla operations on their home turf. That set them up to at least be a threat an nuisance to any proper invader. Meanwhile, they could out-match lesser raiders or pirates, and support the better quality regular forces if called upon to do so.

The Guards were taught how to skirmish, and combat doctrine focused a fair bit on how to work with recently distributed DEWS guns and Cyclone Seals. They also learned how to assault a position, and some shipboard combat. Many got specialist Marine training, as they would see service on the ships. Others, especially those with too much seasickness to be effective on ships, received police and public relations training.

Specialists were taught how to work together, as well as how to support the guardsmen. Those deemed sufficiently loyal were trained to pilot Pelicans or other such devices. Some were also trained in more advanced espionage, counter-espionage, military police work, how to train locals into a guerrilla force, and psyops.

Officers, obviously, received leadership and small to medium sized unit tactics training, and were typically taken from the upper ranks of the specialists. They also received training on how to operate by living off the land without unduly stressing the local population, and trained a lot on proper logistics.

The sailing courses taught everything from the basics to advanced navigation, though the upper level courses only happened when there were enough candidates. It also cross-trained some specialists and guards who were focusing on naval combat or amphibious operations.

It wasn't quite up the quality of Uzushiogakure, partially due to the difference in quality of the people going in, but the goal was to make our home a strong-point, not the strongest-point. At the specialist level, I actually had a fairly competent group. We'd attracted the cream of the crop by handing out seal-blades to all the chakra-active fighters that swore loyalty, and seal-armor to those that were worth it. A lot of opportunistic second sons from Samurai families and entire groups of unemployed ninja had come over to Water-Country for the war, and Tou-san and my forces had recruited heavily. We were also on the leading edge when it came to adopting and adapting to new combat doctrines, largely because I was re-inventing these doctrines from half-remembered military documentaries and books on various wars.

Other than the military program, there was also an advanced civilian academics program. This offered training in things like the sciences, mathematics, ship-building, technical skills, management, history, accounting and law. Some of the courses were obligatory for aspiring managers within my trading company or certain government offices that I oversaw as the governor.

Honestly, only the fact that I was an original investor in the Uzushiogakure Air Mail Service, the profits of our merchant fleet, and the seal-sword factory allowed us to take so much of the population out of the workforce, and put them into education or militia training. As people went through the training an ever smaller portion of the workforce would be training rather than producing, and hopefully the returning workers would be more efficient and effective. When the education costs went down, I planned on making micro-loans available to further increase local industry (and my tax-base); similar programs had proven effective in India and other industrializing regions back on Earth, so I figured they were worth a shot.

The militia training course for those that hadn't gone through the academy was a full year, with a six month "unit training period" afterward for all new formations. The formations, based on geography, were obviously all new since they hadn't been formed yet. For those who had gone through the Academy, training was six months, and they were on a higher unit training tempo for three months following that. Since a lot of these programs were officially opening with my visit, having only been under preparation or training up cadre before-hand, it was a big shift with over a thousand men and women starting militia training.

There was some muttering, but the tax benefits and increased earning potential of certain achievements (being chakra-active top among them), free lunch-time meal for students, and pay while serving as militia seemed to do the trick of keeping the population content. Some of the nobles and landowners seemed a bit wary, but between Tou-san and I we managed to convince them to our side. I had never been particularly standard, but had always been highly effective, so I got the benefit of the doubt as long as things went well.

Kurama seemed quite interested by everything, but was much quieter than he was portrayed in Canon. I could tell that he was watching through my eyes quite often, though he still spent most of his time rifling through my accessible memories, but he rarely spoke to me. Maybe he was still tired, maybe he was just unsure of me yet, maybe he was cautious of the fact that in some ways I was more lofty an existence than he. Or maybe it was less annoying to be bound to a competent, mature, adult (ish) immortal rather than a simple, loud, daft, lowly human. I know if I were bound to Naruto I'd have gone fucking insane.

Eventually though the whirlwind of activity wound down, and it was time to return to Konohagakure.

The Jonin test waited.

Chapter 36: The Jonin Exam

On our way back to Konoha, we finished our plan for the Jonin Exam. The test itself was given only semi-infrequently, and when it was, it tended to be a big deal. The gap between chunin and jonin was pretty huge, and gave enough prestige, position, and financial gains that the competition was fierce. With the recent draw-down of the war in Water Country there was a return of numerous now-experienced veterans. As a result hundreds of chunin were competing for testing slots, and hundreds more genin were participating as it was now much harder to receive field promotions.

The jonin test that year, like most years, consisted of three main sections. The first was individual exams. Part of this was testing knowledge in required subjects such as Konoha's laws and operating regulations. Part was getting a record of acknowledged skills, especially in the basics of ninjutsu, taijutsu, and genjutsu. And part of the individual exams were optional tests in less common subjects; these tests covered everything from interrogation techniques to swordplay. These optional tests were frequently used to obtain special jonin (also known as tokubetsu jonin or tokujo) status.

The second section consisted of war-games. We expected to be pitted against other jonin and chunin teams in everything from escape and evasion to hostage retrieval to full on simulated combat. In some parts of the exam we may be alone, others as a team, and sometimes as a small part of a larger military unit. For larger war-games, actual serving jonin often took higher positions in the command hierarchy to see how they performed and test out experimental strategies. This was by far the most dangerous section of the exams; it was widely known that the acceptable temporary casualty ratio was somewhere in the vicinity of five to ten percent of the examinees. Even with care being taken, everyone going into it knew there would be deaths and crippling injuries.

The last section of the exam was interviews and a final promotion board. The point of these was to go over the service record, get answers for any inconsistencies, and hand down a final recommendation to the Hokage. Examinees could expect either their original jonin sensei (in our case Jiraiya) or their primary commanding officer to be one of the members of the board.

The board could recommend staying as a chunin, in which they would typically say what the chunin should work on. It could recommend promotion to tokujo, and list specific qualifications, as well as what to do to be further promoted. It could, finally, recommend promotion to full jonin, as well as possible departments or mission profiles to be assigned to.

Tokujo were sort of like warrant officers in a modern Earth military. They were typically either subject matter experts and administrators who weren't in the combat command track, or individuals who were nearly but not quite up to serving as a jonin. Most combat track individuals ended up being promoted to tokujo instead of full jonin due to some combination of a weakness in their combat style, lack of sufficiently well-rounded experience, lack of previous command opportunities, political issues, perceptions of unreliability due to youth, etc. Only about one quarter of jonin were directly promoted from chunin.

I was hoping to be among their number, but I could see it going either way between full jonin or just tokujo. On the one hand, I did have my command over my squad. We performed well on missions, and were individually powerful; I was easily strong enough personally. On the other hand, we hadn't been part of the war; this meant that while we had a lot of peacekeeping type missions (a plus), we lacked the battlefield experience that some other competitors had (a significant minus). I was relatively young too.

To confuse things further, I was still at least theoretically part of a nation foreign to Konoha, and held high rank there. That said, due to the alliance and my consulship I was politically important, and had a lot of sway. Things were pretty close without the international political angle; had I been I part of a small but important Konoha clan it could have gone either way. Ultimately, whether I was appointed or not would be a political move.

The Hokage could have had the board approve me, and agreed with their recommendation. That would have shown a desire on Konoha's part to have a close working relationship with Uzushiogakure. He could have had them disapprove me, and yet promoted me anyways. That would have show a dedication on his part to our alliance, and how much he valued it, while putting me on notice that I was enjoying a relatively decent time as a ninja only under his forbearance. Those two were, in my mind, the likeliest scenarios.

Less likely, he could have had the board approve me but disapproved my promotion. That would have demonstrated significant ire on his part, and make my position very shaky in Konoha; everyone would know he disapproved, since ninja gossiped like fishmongers. It also would have likely negatively affected relations between our two governments. Or, he could have had the board disapprove me and agreed with their recommendation. Still a bit of frosting between relations, a bit of putting me on notice, but less so than countermanding the board to not promote me would have been.

The biggest problem though with the jonin exams was that it gave away many of one's best tricks. While I was specialized as a strategic-class destructive combatant, that was one of the very worst specializations to be known for; it attracted assassins like flies to rotting meat. I wanted to emphasize my combat capabilities, but come off as a generally well-rounded but elite prospect. Part of that was that I didn't want my team to be assigned to heavy-combat operations; I much preferred the semi-independent troubleshooter jobs we generally took.

The first decision we made was which individual tests we would take, and what capabilities we'd reveal. I wasn't capable of sitting the specialist exams for genjutsu or taijutsu. Both focused on not just personal achievement, but in furthering the theory and discovering new and better techniques to teach basic and intermediate practitioners. My personal taijutsu, though exceedingly deadly, relied on use of chakra-chains and chakra-scribing seals on contact. My genjutsu, though actually deadly, was totally incapable of the subtle uses that needed to be demonstrated. The true value of a genjutsu master was not on the battlefield, but in the parlors and dining halls, subtly manipulating opinion and emotion to gather secrets and obtain preferential deals. Both would stand me in good stead as part of my general combat skills tests, but neither were applicable to any potential tokujo status.

While I might have been able to take the ninjutsu exam, and my personal chakra expansion techniques would likely have gotten me a promotion on their own, I had no desire to share those with anyone outside of possibly my family. Displaying my wide-scale ninjutsu was also off the table; it would have gotten around. Similarly, I couldn't take the sealer's exam since any sealing work I did had to happen under the aegis of my Uzushiogakure identity.

There were two combat-oriented specialist exams I could take: Swordsmanship and Battlefield Presence. I was a capable swordsman, and was finally large enough and strong enough to actually match and defeat other swordsmen worth that title. While I was expected to eventually take students or apprentices, that wasn't actually required; unlike the basics of ninjutsu, taijutsu, basic ninja tools and genjutsu, swordsmanship was its own, specialist skill that was based more on battlefield usage than on theory and furthering the art.

As for Battlefield Presence, well, I was capable of shutting down everyone within range after only a few months practice; I'd since spent six years refining my technique until I could do everything from making myself project a weak SEP (Someone Else's Problem) field, whip a crowd into a frenzy or pacify them in a moment, or make myself so dreadful that my enemies just shut down. My projection of the Death Experience was strong enough that it could kill those with weaker chakra systems because the sympathetic resonance convinced them that they were, in fact, dead.

Apart from those, I was also taking the "Diplomatic (focus: Noble)" test. I was fairly sure I'd make a good showing, and there was always a need for noble-ranked individuals capable of diplomatic missions since ninja tended to lack social status compared to the samurai caste.

Sachiko had signed up for the Genjutsu, Poison and Court Intrigue specialist exams. While her genjutsu and poison might not be quite up to the level of, say, an Uchiha or Orochimaru respectively, her skills were more than strong enough to support her focus in Court Intrigue. Since she and Yasu were permanently part of my team due to laws concerning retainers, foreign dignitaries and Konohagakure generally not wanting to piss me off, this would help keep us positioned to take non-combat or low-combat operations in nice places rather than lengthy patrols or search and destroy missions against enemy ninja.

Yasu finished us off with taking the Stealth, Trapping, and Tracking exams. His stealth was truly impressive, and he was capable of the urban aggressive investigation modules. He was skilled enough with his traps to keep them well positioned and hid, and his capabilities were significantly enhanced by using advanced Uzushiogakure seals. As a tracker, he was middling-skilled. His chakra sensing was strong, and he had a type of limited psychometric technique that allowed him to trace chakra trails in the right circumstances. That said, he lacked the wide-range scent and physical evidence scanning capability of the Aburame's insects or the Inuzuka's nose.

After I got a look at the competition, I anticipated that I would make jonin, and that Sachiko and Yasu had fair chances. We were all sufficiently skilled in taijutsu to at least keep up in combat, though we tended to focus a bit more on using weapons and combat multipliers like chakra-flow, poisons and seals. I'd made sure that we were all at least above average for jutsu, and everyone knew at least a few utility, defense and offense techniques using Water and Wind techniques. We could all do at least some genjutsu. As a trump card, we had my seal-armor, and Sachiko and Yasu's full Body-Seals, including the Cyclone-seals. That said, we wouldn't be demonstrating any of those beyond the lowest level of the armor or body-seal systems.

If anything, I might have actually harmed Sachiko and Yasu's chances. They couldn't be deployed without me, so there was less incentive to promote them. As a group, we weren't experienced enough or trustworthy enough to be a full unit of jonin taking absolutely top-tier independent missions, and I wasn't experienced enough to command such a group. Nor had we gone through the military track that might see us getting assigned as the Auxiliary Ninja Command Group for one of the Fire Daimyo's Legions.

A high-level group of a jonin and two tokujo, on the other hand, was a bit more believable as a final squad makeup. And then in a few years, as we continued maturing and growing, we might become one of those extremely rare elite jonin squads.

The compulsory section of the individual exams went about as I expected. I limited my jutsu demonstrations to A-rank, but showed off my full mastery of wind and water jutsu by using minimal chakra and exquisite control. It was a careful balance. I wanted to be strong enough to be fearsome, but not so strong that I was a priority target. A few years more, and I knew I'd be a monster so powerful that people would be afraid of targeting me, strong enough that none but the greatest might hope to challenge me; I wanted to avoid the stage where skilled but not legendary assassins were dispatched against me and that was actually a threat.

My Presence exam was pretty amusing. I showed off the breadth and depth of the effects that I could create; most others with that kind of interest in emotional manipulation skills were capable of genjutsu that I simply wasn't. Instead, I used my Presence for all of those applications. While I was "merely" the equal of the top contemporary generals and leaders when it came to wide-scale morale-boosting and speech-emphasizing, I was among the most advanced ever for subtle use of Presence.

I was truly unmatched when it came to aggressive Killing Intent; even at a fraction of its full strength, my Death Experience knocked the most susceptible of my examiners into a day-long coma. This was partially due to the short distance and partially due to not being in a fight-to-the-death situation which tended to raise Will-to-Live. The chief examiner for that section told me that I would certainly be receiving at least tokujo for that alone.

My Court Diplomacy test similarly went well. It was very unusual for a Konohagakure ninja to be a noble or even a samurai; my status meant that I was fairly uniquely suited to dealing with certain traditionalist lords as well as ceremonially important roles in negotiations that required a representative of a certain minimum status. I knew the typical behavioral patterns and customs, and while I was a lord of Whirlpool, I was still clearly a lord. Being a bit more of a traditionalist himself, the examiner didn't actually say straight out what his recommendation would be, but still conveyed in the double-speak of courtly phrases that I had done well.

But by far and away my most interesting exam was in swordsmanship.

Chapter 37: Facing the Fang

The swordsmanship exam had three sections to it. First, a demonstration match using bokken (wooden swords of similar weight and size to the real ones) or dulled blades. In our case, I gave my examiner a seal which would lock the location of the sword when the blade was about to cut flesh or bone. That way we could go all out without worrying about death, and use our usual swords to do so.

The second part was a controlled, chakra-free duel to score light wounds. Internal strengthening and speed-enhancing techniques were allowed, but nothing else. The threat of death was part of this test, so safety seals weren't allowed in this section.

The last part was a full on, (certain) chakra techniques included, kenjutsu match. We were meant to avoid death or maiming, but this exam was one of the most dangerous. There were two full jonin-level medic-nin on standby, and each had a chunin medic assistant. Even then, this exam was known to have a relatively high injury and death rate.

The thing that made my swordsmanship exam so interesting was my opponent. I was up against the White Fang, Hatake Sakumo himself. He was Konoha's greatest practitioner of kenjutsu techniques, partially due to his family's unique White Chakra Blade style. Unlike most kenjutsu styles which focused on enhancing a blade, the White Chakra Blade extended a "perfect blade" formed from chakra given some base blade. Senju Tobirama's Sword of the Thunder God was actually inspired by the Hatake Kenjutsu. While the White Chakra Blade allowed conventional kenjutsu techniques, just using the super low-weight and sharp White Chakra Sabre, it excelled most as a nin-kenjutsu style, combining no-tell, high speed ranged attacks with sword-combat. Funnily enough, my own chakra-based wind-variant of the Whirling Sword style was somewhat similar.

I decided that I didn't want to risk my heirloom blades, and so I was using my secondary swords for the fight. They were practically identical to my actual swords, with the same weight and shape, but were seal-swords rather than seal-enhanced chakra-conductive metal. Sakumo, likely due to the chakra free sections of the test, was also using a full katana rather than his typical white tanto that had led to his moniker of "Konoha's White Fang". We bowed to our examiners and each other, and began the demonstration match.

There were a few different ways a sword fight tended to go. The first, and most brutal, was the type of fight you saw on the battlefield. Two swordsmen met, and they tried to cut through each other as quickly as possible. The faster, stronger, more skilled and luckiest survived; the other died. These fights were quick and decisive, but carried a much higher risk when facing enemies that were of similar skill levels. Such combat was most frequent when killing as many people as possible in as short a time as possible was the focus on both sides, and endurance was a factor. Advancing troops drove combatants together, and forced victory or being trampled or surrounded and cut down. This was the kind of fight practiced by heroes and soldiers on the battlefield.

The second type of fight was the kind you tended to see in a duel between similarly skilled opponents. They started further away, and tried to lure their opponent into making a mistake large enough to allow a decisive blow to be struck without taking one in return. Most of the fight occurred at longer ranges, and the fighters often withdrew several times as the clashes were inconclusive. Sometimes, they would ramp up the fight slowly, varying tempo and force to get a better read on their opponent without giving away their own secrets, tricking the enemy into a set expectation and then pulling out a sudden acceleration or zero-range technique at the critical moment to achieve victory. Musashi Miyamoto's Sparking Stone, one of the few techniques actually described in his Book of the Five Rings, was one such technique; it called for a sudden reinforcement of the blow at the moment of impact, without any tells, to break the guard and wound the enemy. This was the kind of fight that inspires story and song.

The third type of fight was almost totally foreign to Konohagakure and the Elemental Nations as a whole. This was the sport-spar. Think of it like Western Olympic Fencing. The objective was not to kill or incapacitate your opponent without receiving a blow of your own, but rather to do so first. It was practically suicidal to practice that way as an actual combatant, since far too often both sides would end up striking a killing blow at nearly the same time.

My first match against Sakumo, the demonstration match, was closest to the second type of fight. We weren't trying to crush the other as quickly as possible, but to pull out all of our opponent's skill and demonstrate our own to the examiners – after all, Sakumo may not have been up for promotion, but he was still being seen fighting by his peers. Our purpose was to have a beautiful fight, rather than just to win it.

I could tell within moments that he was a better swordsman. My own style relied on using things like super-dense wind-flow, setting up openings to launch my chains, and distracting the enemy at crucial moments by flaring my Presence. Sakumo surely used those techniques too. But where my footing was almost perfect, his was perfect. Where my reflexes were trained within moment, his were a fraction of a moment. He was stronger, a bit faster, and just more experienced. Not for nothing was he the greatest Kenjutsu master in a village with thousands of superhuman killers.

To put things in perspective, I might have ranked in the top one percent with the sword, even better with chakra; he was in the top five Konoha-affiliated swordsmen without chakra, period. With chakra, he was the best. If I could have faced him all out, and surprised him by tanking a hit to my armor while launching a full out strike using elemental manipulation, chakra chains, and a territory-control seal array, I might have been able to take him.

As it was, well… I put up a fight, and learned more in that match than I had over months of practicing.

We opened up with the basics, at a relatively slow speed. My overhead slash was diverted with the minimum of effort, and I slid next to his retaliatory thrust, guiding his sword away from my torso with the body of my sword, then giving it a slight push and trying a to catch him in a horizontal sweeping slash.

As he stepped back, my sword just brushing his clothing. I extended in a lunge, trying to catch up to his retreating body. He dropped into a middle guard, caught my sword in a blade-lock, and began to go for a disarm. I twisted and disengaged, grinning as we each stepped back and prepared for another clash. The whole exchange had lasted less than two seconds.

We met again and again, ramping up our speed and power and pulling out flashier techniques and combinations. Fifteen minutes in, I was covered in sweat and breathing heavily, and was inordinately pleased that I had managed to get Sakumo sweating at all. I had switched from the fairly standard techniques to the faster, if more energy intensive, movements and sweeping blocks of the Whirling Sword. I had definitely come out the worse for our exchanges, but I could sense that Sakumo was impressed. I had at least managed a few touches of my own, including a few with my hands that would have allowed me to plant a killing seal. The judge called out the stop, and we disengaged and bowed before deactivating the seals that kept our swords safe.

There was a five minute break between the demonstration match and the live-steel duel. The next match was best two of three. The purpose was to make sure the examinee's skills didn't degrade when there was the actual threat of death. It also meant that I had five minutes to come up with some sort of strategy to score at least one point on Sakumo. But without chakra-techniques beyond internal reinforcement being allowed, I really didn't have anything I could think of.

With my time ticking down, I remembered something that was "so crazy it might just work". The suicidal technique of Shirou Emiya from Fate/Stay-Night.

In actuality, his style was pretty shitty against any properly experienced fighter. The idea of leaving openings to force a certain battle-progression has always been a technique, and quite well known to most high level martial arts fighters. As such, there are a number of ways to defeat the technique. First, and most obvious, was to force the opponent to attack, and win in the counterstrike. This avoided the ability to be forced into a certain attack pattern. The second, also basic, was to attack however you please anyways. So what if there was a weakness you can take advantage of? If you were truly that much faster, stronger, more conventionally skilled, then just attack. Attack as you please, and break through his strength. Or third, quite simply being better at that sort of martial mind game than the opponent was.

Unluckily for me, my opponent was quite capable of all three approaches. So if I wanted to win, I had to not just appear weak, but actually become weak.

Again, we faced each other, and saluted our judges and opponent. Sakumo kept position in guard, as did I while we maneuvered. I was pretending to be more affected by the psychological pressure of facing a superior swordsman than I actually was. Eventually, as my feet slid into position, I flared my reinforcement and attacked.

I was fast, furious, powerful. Our blades met once, as he deflected my slash with a parry. A second time, as I knocked his counter-thrust off line to the left of my body. A third time, as he tried to cut me with a horizontal slash; I blocked and used a diagonal footwork that resulted in our keeping contact and spinning in a circle as I tried to disengage. A last, fourth time as he began to withdraw, then instead doubled down with his strike, breaking through my guard and leaving a cut on my upper left arm. It wasn't dangerous, but did weaken the arm significantly.

We disengaged, and as my sleeve soaked in blood my arm healed. That was perhaps the greatest advantage from Kurama's waking; he was able to do part of the work of filtering his chakra, and had improved how effectively I healed. But I pretended that it was still wounded, still weak.

I fixed up my uniform, making sure that it was just so, and made sure that neither my katana's sheathe nor my wakizashi would impede my movement. Both were organized on my left hip for a right-hand draw; generally, the wakizashi was a backup for places where politeness required you to remove your main sword (such as at the dinner table) or used in tight spaces. While some dual-wielding techniques existed, they were more typical of a samurai than a ninja.

Both ready, and with Sakumo seemingly content to wait on me, I prepared to attack again. I moved into range, and attacked with a right-footed forward-stepping slash aimed at his shoulder on my right. It was a blow that used the right side more than the left, and kept him thinking my injury was still an issue. He blocked, shifting my sword further to the right.

Just as predicted, I thought with a vicious grin.

Rather than disengaging as he'd suspect, I extended my step into a lunge, bringing me in close. I let my sword go with my right hand, and began dropping my body to lessen the pressure on my sword enough that I could stay in contact using just my left handed hold. As I did this, I used an Iaijutsu technique with right hand on my wakizashi, a rapid-draw lateral slash aimed at his stomach.

Sakumo's eyes were full of his shock at the situation as he tried to dodge. Time seemed to crawl, a side effect of the mental-reinforcement technique I was running to improve my reaction speed. And I could tell that my wakizashi was going to just miss.

Despite everything, Sakumo was just too good. So, as he was springing back and slightly to my left, I released the wakizashi, flinging it after him. It caught him as his feet were leaving the ground, and sliced through the muscle just below the ribs on his left flank. It was only barely more than a scratch, but it counted. Ecstatic and smiling broadly, I recovered my footing from my attack as one of the stunned judges declared my point.

The third and final point, Sakumo decided to be on the attack. He attacked mercilessly, ruining my guard with a flurry of powerful blows. Soon he knocked my sword into a totally useless position and leveled his blade across the side of my throat with a faint grin before I could recover. His message was pretty clear; I wouldn't be getting an inflated head. Despite my defeat, Sakumo was kind of like Hanzo the Salamander. I might not have beaten him, but even giving him a fight was enough to be seen as badass.

Again, we had a five minute break before the third stage of the exam. This time, it was an all-out kenjutsu match. One round, one winner. Ninjutsu or genjutsu using hand-seals and sealing were forbidden, but attacks that used chakra through the sword and Battlefield Presence were allowed, as were certain classes of nin-kenjutsu, including techniques like Hayate's Dance of the Crescent Moon from canon Naruto, or Hatake's own chakra-blade techniques.

This meant that I actually had a chance. I was close enough to Sakumo in speed, and not so much weaker, that he wouldn't be able to crush me in an instant. Which meant that I'd be able to deploy the full weight of my Death Experience as we closed.

Sakumo was a true monster, veteran of over a hundred battlefields and thousands of life-or-death moments. Given time to acclimate, he was likely among the very few that might be able to stay combat effective at close range to my field, even when it was focused onto him. But the first time he felt it, at point blank range? That was a different matter entirely. I hypothesized it would be able to cripple even the Hokage for a moment, enough to secure victory. Until I faced a similar enemy in a true life-or-death struggle, this was my best chance to test that theory.

Unlike the previous rounds, I could now use my kenjutsu style in its full glory. While I was capable with a sword, it was largely a hobby that helped train speed and physical fitness in a way that was at least somewhat useful; in real combat my sword was something between a prop and a focus for the weight of my Presence and Elemental Channeling. My goal, when using the sword, was not to face an enemy as an opposing ninja, but to represent the full fury of a god. Most enemies would fall to chain and seal and jutsu; the remainder would be cut down as they cowered at my approach. It was a style designed both to be effective and to overawe.

As I prepared to face Sakumo that last time, I started to flare my chakra. At first, the examiners and Sakumo noticed the weight of my chakra on their senses with a bit of surprise. But I just kept building, and building, and building until the air around me was starting to waver due to the metaphysical force of my being on reality. Soon the judges, jonin all, were visibly struggling to maintain chakra levels high enough not to be incapacitated.

I grinned at Sakumo, and surrounded myself with a dense shell of wind, focusing it so heavily on my sword that it looked and felt to people's senses like I was carrying a hurricane. But, for all the chakra I was outputting, more than Sakumo and the three judges could as a group, I had perfect control. There was no great wind, no leakage. And that, to those who really knew what mattered, was probably the most terrifying thing of all. In response Sakumo's sword lit up like a brand with a bright, white chakra.

Half a minute into my preparations, a squad of ANBU arrived then said something into their communicators before retreating to the edges of the training ground. Clearly my rampant chakra had worried Village Security. I would have laughed if it weren't so inappropriate.

Instead, I just continued in raising my chakra level, expanding my bubble of chakra around myself and making my wind denser and sharper. While expensive in terms of chakra, a bubble of your own chakra around you acted as a form of limited omniscience within that space. It was a high-level technique, and one that was popular among upper-level swordsmen. It was also a way to forcefully impose higher levels of Presence and limit the Presence to a certain space.

"Hatake-san, you should prepare yourself for my Presence. It is typically crippling on first exposure. I've been looking forward to being able to test it on you since I heard you were assigned as my evaluator."

He quirked an eyebrow at me. "Normally you don't warn your opponent about that kind of thing, Uzumaki-san," he replied in a smooth baritone.

"I value the experience of how the technique fares against such a high-level opponent more than I would value beating you due to lack of preparation," I answered. While I was being truthful, I was also playing to the judges a bit; that foresight could help when the board review my application.

He just nodded. Eventually, one of the judges came forward, sweating at the combined pressure caused by my massive chakra flare and Sakumo's own more tightly focused aura that he was using to prevent my flare from affecting him.

"Begin!" called the judge from a safe distance.

That instant, I slammed on the Death Experience, keeping the limit of my area of effect as tight to myself and Sakumo as possible. Sakumo, already in motion, froze for a full second, so stunned that his chakra control failed and his blade extinguished.

In a battlefield, with the chaos and team-mates to cover for him, he might have survived such a failure. In a duel, at our range, and using our level of ranged chakra-flow techniques? A second was an eternity. I made it clear to the judges that I was taking my time as I positioned myself just to his side and struck.

My wind-flow flew right past Sakumo, doing nothing but ruffling his clothes. The forest behind him was not so fortunate, with a forty yard long cone of trees of earth blasted apart, shredded in the storm of my elemental blade. I sheathed my katana and stepped back as a stunned judge called the match in my favor.

Sakumo and I bowed to the judges and each other, then he approached me. Luckily he didn't seem upset at his loss.

"I would never have believed anyone, let alone someone of your age, could create such an overwhelming presence," he praised. "Your sword skills are impressive too; when you're in the village, you should call on me to spar or practice."

That was a pretty big compliment from the White Fang. Being invited to spar like that meant that he recognized my abilities, not just as a promising student of the blade, but as an actual opponent. I bowed fairly deeply.

"That is a great honor, thank you," I answered. He laughed outright and shook his head.

"You managed to beat me. I think we could both gain from the experience."

"Very well, Hatake-san. I'll look forward to it!" I replied with a grin.

Later, I heard through the grapevine that this fight had netted me another sobriquet. Apparently one of the other top jonin had heard that Sakumo lost to a fourteen-year-old chunin in a full-on sword match and decided to tease him a bit.

One of the judges was there too. "Had you been there, you would have understood," he said. "Sakumo-san didn't face a simple ninja in that match."

"If he didn't face a ninja in that match, what did he face?" the shit-stirring Jonin then asked.

At this, the judge and Sakumo were quiet for a moment before Sakumo gave an answer.

"I faced a Wicked Storm."

Chapter 38: The Tea Cup Conflict

With the individual exams completed, we had a couple days off before the main event of the promotion exams: the war-games. For this year, we were recreating the Tea Cup Conflict, which had occurred a few decades before. Despite its name, the conflict was a real mess that culminated in a three way civil war.

The first side in this war was the teenage heir to the Daimyo's seat for Tea Country. He had been usurped by his uncle following the previous Daimyo's death, and was spirited away by a group of loyal ninja clan members who were his retainers and guards. With him were his two younger sisters and wife. His wife was a noblewoman from Fire Country, and a distant relative of Fire's Daimyo (the one before the lord at the time of the exams). Between this, an old treaty's semi-loose language and the usurper's distaste for Fire Country, the Fire Daimyo decided to send a detachment of ninja to assist his "Royal Cousins in their efforts to regain lawful control of the great nation of Tea." The heir's forces were concentrated in the North, especially in the semi-mountainous, mostly undeveloped forest region where Konoha's guerrilla ninja slaughtered any of the usurper's forces that trespassed.

The second side was, obviously, the usurper (or new Daimyo, depending on your point of view). While a bit of a bastard, he was a competent military leader and diplomat. He leaned towards a greater reliance on longer distance trade via nations like Sea rather than being a client of Fire, and was in talks with Wind and River countries for support. While there were some rebels still hiding out with his nephew and a bit of grumbling, he did have control of the military forces and the lawful apparatus of government. His main problem was not, in fact, his nephew. Rather, he was dealing with a major rebellion in the South.

This brings us to the third side. The Southern rebels. A fairly progressive bunch, their leadership and funding came from a wealthy coterie of merchants and landowners, with a few lesser nobles sprinkled in for good measure. They were trying to take advantage of the situation to secede from feudal control, bringing the most productive and profitable parts of the country with them. While this faction had a lot of money, and a fairly large population base, they were not as competent militarily. They relied on mercenaries and hired ninja, typically not from any great village but from the clans that had yet to join a village. They lacked the elites of the heir's Konohagakure forces, or the leadership and professionalism of the usurper's army and retainers. They did, however, have fairly large numbers of battle-hardened troops at the lower levels, even if their discipline and morals were often lacking.

The part of the conflict that we were copying was the end of the war. Historically, the usurper had captured the heir's sisters and wife, and had given him three days to surrender himself. An infiltration specialist from Konoha managed to kill the usurper with a teacup during a tea ceremony (hence the Teacup Conflict for a name). With the usurper's death, the heir was able to re-take command of the legitimate forces much in the same way that Napoleon did after returning from exile, and then proceeded to reinforce them with his resistance fighters. The newly unified army, previously being pushed back, managed to make a major reversal. Simultaneous assassinations of Rebel political leaders by loyalists and a large offensive broke the mercenaries, and within weeks of the usurper's assassination the war was basically over except for some mop-up.

Historically, the civil war was interesting for a few reasons. Most applicable to Konoha though was a shift into allowing more women to fill combat ninja roles, even though it had been an infiltrator that accomplished the assassination. As a side note, a young (at the time) jonin called Hatake Sakumo was the second in command of the heir's Konohagakure forces, and made his name in the conflict.

For our exam the war-games were meant to represent these last days of the conflict. Jonin and chunin candidates were divided into the three teams, in roughly equivalent numbers to the historical situation. Commanders were allowed to assign a certain number of troops to special zones including the Usurper's Command Post (where the hostages were held), the Rebel Command Post (where "assassinations" would remove a percentage of the Rebel forces) or the Heir's Camp. The rest were deployed in the "general combat zone" to duke it out.

The general objective was victory, but each team would be judged by the watching judges on how well they achieved their sub-objectives. Candidates could get points for everything from enemy kills, to changing sides to the winners after their side's leader was "killed", to managing to avenge their leader. Those rules more than anything drove home the fact that this was a ninja exam to me.

The exam limit was five days. Unlike the chunin exam in Naruto (the show), this was meant to simulate warfare, not replace it. Blunted weapons were used, as were "safe" poisons. Highly damaging techniques were meant to be aimed just a little bit away from the "enemy" when possible. General soldiers were simulated by examiners specializing in clone techniques. Judges were responsible for calling people out as "dead", as were individuals themselves. Cheating on that was considered to be lying to a superior officer, and could be grounds for some fairly nasty punishments.

Our unit was assigned to the Red Team, the heir's forces. The usurper's team was represented by a blue sash, while the southern rebels had white sashes. We were interviewed during the down time between the individual exams and the war-games by the Red Commander, a jonin called Nara Shikata who was a former legion jonin. He was a good pick for something like this; he was used to working with conventional military forces, and focused on being a strategy, guerrilla and counterintelligence specialist rather than a heavy hitter himself. As a legion jonin though, he would have done little to command larger formations of ninja, and was restricted to mostly supporting conventional operations rather than managing special forces operations themselves. I suspected that this exam was partially to test his ability to command larger groups of ninja, especially in the kind of skirmishing warfare that ninja practiced rather than the more straightforward combat seen in the Daimyo's army.

We met our temporary commander in a tea shop on the edge of the Nara lands. We were shown in by one of his adjutants, and with a bit of a grin at the "life of a ninja" moment, I noticed a screen of subtle guards, likely trying to avoid ninja from the other teams from spying on our preparations. He was sitting behind a table with tea and snacks. The adjutant bowed and left, leaving us in the room with Shikata and an examiner who was sitting off to the side. As the examiners were technically "invisible" for the purposes of the exam, we weren't meant to acknowledge them. Shikata seemed to be in his early thirties, and had the typical fit and lithe form shared by most ninja, as well as his fair share of wrinkles from the weather, and small scars on his hands from training with blades.

At a guess, he had put in a full twenty years' service as a ninja assigned to the legions, and taken the opportunity to move over to Konoha's village command structure with a half-pension. He looked professional enough; I could sense that he was reasonably powerful and had a good control of his chakra. A legion jonin was typically the top ninja out of an entire legion battle group, which would normally include a little over sixty genin, ten chunin and a tokujo or two. Under normal circumstances, they would work their way up the ranks. Considering casualties and transfers out, this meant that Shikata was likely in the top fraction of a percent of the ninja assigned to assist the Daimyo's forces (though his clan connections would have helped him achieve promotions). Compared to someone like Sakumo though, he was a cat next to a tiger.

Shikata already had our service records, which included our performance in the most recent exams. He motioned for us to take a seat. I sat across from him, with Sachiko and Yasu on my right and left. We exchanged greetings, and he served us some tea and placed the snacks, a set of rice cakes dusted in sugar, in front of us.

"You represent quite the problem for me, Uzumaki-san. Beyond the main objectives of keeping the heir "alive" and winning this wargame, we have two main secondary objectives. Kill the usurper and rescue the hostages. Of course, our enemy knows this too. I have to balance the troops assigned to distracting the forces hunting for us, retrieving the hostages and killing the Usurper, and preparing to assist or destroy the Usurper's forces in the field." He paused for a sip of tea. "Can you think of how you might be a problem for me?" I took a moment to think, then answered.

"It's a combination of my power, my lack of proper battlefield experience, age, and my political visibility. I'm strong enough that if you don't make the best use of me, it'll hurt your judgment from the examiners, especially after I managed to take down the White Fang in my Kenjutsu exam. On the other hand, some of my strongest abilities are either too lethal, or, like my Death Experience, don't discriminate between friendly versus enemy forces well enough. While I've extensive experience leading a chunin cell, I haven't led larger units, and we tended to take "elite police" type operations rather than military ones. Further, no matter how strong I am, there are genin in this that are older than I am, which hurts my ability to give commands. My status just means that people will be paying even more attention, and I could probably make trouble for you if I were upset."

"Exactly. So, what might you do in my position?" Fucking Nara, and his Socratic method. Then again, it was pretty clever; if he could get me to come up with his solution, then everyone would be happy and I wouldn't be able to bitch and moan afterward.

I thought for a few moments, then decided to be a bit of a smart ass. "I'd likely ask the young potential jonin how he thinks he should be employed."

The Nara gave an amused grin at my cheek and motioned for me to elaborate.

"If he agreed with my plan," I continued, "then at the least I'd be insulated from blow-back. If he had a better idea than I originally had, I'd be able to use it. And, at the worst, I'd have a better understanding of his skills and how he thinks."

Still grinning, Shikata nodded. "Good. So far, we agree then. So, how should I best use you?"

"You should assign us the strike against the Usurper's Command Post."

"Alright. Convince me why."

"We're the best unit for the job. You should know from our records that we're a well rounded team with high combat potential. Since the defenders are allowed six hours of preparation, a normal group can't just blitz the post. Knowing the results of the Tea Cup Conflict, the enemy may begin to move the Blue Leader (who was the stand in for the usurper) or the hostages from the Command Post as soon as the game begins, accepting the slight increase in communications time for messengers and using communications seals to compensate.

"I can shut all of that down. Sachiko will provide air support with a Custom quality Pelican, and take out any messenger birds too. I'm good enough with seals to shut down the enemy's communications via seals in the opening moments as well." At this, the jonin raised his hand to stop me.

"How good are you with seals? And what can you do for us with them? There's a note in your service record that says you're a full Uzumaki Expert, but no notes on any missions to do sealing work."

"Technically, any sealing work I did would be as a member of Uzushiogakure, not Konohagakure. Konoha would have to pay a full Uzumaki Expert Sealer's fee, which is fairly intense. I'm allowed to use whatever personal seals I want though." He nodded.

"I understand. So, you'd first knock out communications, and prevent reinforcements or retreat via your Pelican. Then what?"

"That's right. Then, Yasu and I would assault. Yasu would scout, and we'd avoid, disarm or destroy traps between us. When we approached the Blue fortified Command Post, I'd use my Death Experience Presence at maximum power to incapacitate the base. Then, while Yasu retrieved the hostages, I'd kill the Blue Leader and instruct the Blue Commander and guards to turn to our side or be wiped out. We would send you word, and move to the main battle region to support the newly joined Red and Blue forces."

"How strong is your Death Experience technique?" he interrupted as I paused, finished with my explanation of what my unit would first accomplish

"Strong enough to let me beat Hatake Sakumo," I answered with a smile. "Would you like a demonstration?"

"I know this is going to be troublesome, but I probably should."

"Very well. Brace yourself." That said, I began to ramp up the power. Shikata was looking visibly uncomfortable. "Right now, I'm not focusing the technique to any particular region, just letting it free." I continued to increase the power by trickling more power to the Presence. Shikata was sweating and shaking a bit. "And, I've just hit about one percent of my power. Should I stop?" Shikata gave a jerk of his head that I interpreted as a nod. I stopped the technique, and he slumped backwards.

"Gods above. No wonder Hatake called you the Wicked Storm. That was brutal. Alright, you've sold me on your plan. It's good too, I'd originally planned on at least two jonin candidate cells and a half dozen chunin candidate cells for that operation, and would have launched it on the second or third day. A quick blitz, led by that technique, will result in far more turning to our side and a better victory. You're capable of the more usual uses of Presence; are they of similar strength?"

"They're not as overwhelming, but because of certain issues I have with genjutsu, I focused more on training my Presence to use as a substitute."

"Interesting," he replied, then sat up with a much stiffer posture and more commanding voice. "Jonin Candidate Uzumaki Daichi. Here are your orders. You will lead your cell, and launch an assault as we've discussed on the Blue Command Post immediately upon the start of the war-games. You will first block communications, retreat or reinforcements using aerial assets and personal seals, then assault the post, rescue the hostages, and execute the Blue Leader. You will turn as many as possible, and execute the rest.

"Upon success of the first part of your mission and your report by communications seal, you will proceed at maximum practical speed to the main combat region. There, you will announce your success and use Presence techniques to turn as many of the former Blue team to our side. You will meet up with the local command squad, and launch aerial assets, striking at the White Command Post. New orders may be given as the situation develops. Are these orders understood, and do you accept your mission?" In unison, we bowed our heads and replied.

"Yes Sir!"

Chapter 39: Game Breaking

Honestly, I was pretty stoked about our mission within the war-game. It was the best use of our squad, and even though it was just a game, it would earn us some good reputation within the village. Plus, when it leaked, which it would, it would give the world a totally incorrect impression of me. Instead of being "that scary fucker with ridiculous strategic-class jutsu" I'd be "that monster you cannot fight at close range."

It was basic strategy, laid out by Sun-Tzu. Appear weak where you are strong, and strong where you are weak. While my close range combat was good, it wasn't really the best, especially if they could overcome my Presence. Engage me at mid to long range though? You'd be lucky to last seconds. And shaping enemy engagements that way helped my survivability a lot. My new armor, even though it wasn't a full set of body seals, took care of a lot of the threats that fell under the category of "ranged assassination" methods, and my body was highly resistant to even the deadliest toxins due to the absurd levels of chakra powering my Uzumaki bloodline and Kurama's assistance.

The war-games started at dawn on a Monday, with the first six hours being restricted to your "starting-zone" to make traps, defenses and preparations. The war-games ended at sunrise on Saturday, or when one side had won. During those first hours, Yasu set up protections for Sachiko and a trapped fall-back position for our squad, while Sachiko launched one of her Pelicans and I prepared the jamming-seal. Off to the side, there was a judge with a black and yellow striped sash and head-cover watching our team. With our tasks completed, we ate some food and caught a quick nap. Ten minutes before the games started, I trotted over to the examiner.

"Examiner-san, I have a question. You are using a seal-based communications system, correct?" I asked.

"Yes, why?"

"This seal," I answered, pointing at the seal I had prepared, "will jam all Konoha communication seals in the region. I was wondering if this fell under the rules for wide-effect jutsu that the judges make orders on to simulate rather than the jutsu actually getting used." The examiner looked pretty interested at the possibilities.

"You can do that? Let me ask my superior." He activated the communication seal, then spent a few moments talking to one of the higher examiners. "Alright, so the ruling is, if you can activate it for thirty seconds at the start of the test, then deactivate it, and we will issue a ruling not to use communication seals in this combat area."

"Thank you, examiner-san. As a note, my squad's communications are immune to this particular seal, and I have left a communicator with my commander that is on our communications net." With the ruling given, I returned to Yasu and Sachiko. I gave the seal to Sachiko to activate it when the round started. Yasu and I went to the edge of our starting zone, ready to blitz through the forest and attack the enemy command post about one mile away. We heard a loud trumpet-call starting the exams, and were off.

"Comms check," I called out as we ran through the woods.

"Yasu, up," Yasu replied.

"Sachiko, up. Jammer active. Pelican overhead. Showing your targetting information too," Sachiko added. The HUD-projector seal that I used could link in with the Pelican controls, allowing me to effectively designate targets. A few seconds later, Sachiko continued. "Showing one messenger squad, three chunin candidates at a guess, leaving the command post. Orders?"

"Just the one? Track, do not engage until out of sight, then engage with DEWS." We were already coming up on the post, and entering the boundary of the enemy's starting region. Yasu took point, and we both started moving more slowly, checking for traps using our sensing and special vision modes to notice the reflection from wires. Yasu had a Void Sensor, a seal that used vibrations to detect hidden rooms or spaces, but that could also detect pit-traps. He pointed a few out to me, and we traced a safe path through the defenses.

"Targets out of sight of the command post, now engaging. Target one and two down," I heard from Sachiko. "Target three evading, target three down." The messenger squad was officially "dead" now. The enemy was likely in a bit of disarray from having their communications disabled, and a messenger from the general combat zone was likely headed our way to find out what was happening.

"Good job," I replied. "Keep an eye out for reinforcements or an investigation unit from their main force."

"Will do."

By now, Yasu and I had made it to the edge of the woods surrounding the enemy command post, which was now about a hundred meters away. It was a small, fortified compound with a stone wall that many ninja could simply jump over, and a small stone keep and training ground on the inside. It was likely based off of a military outpost designed for local bandit suppression, with a total population of up to a century, or eighty men and officers. There were likely only a few squads inside. At a guess, one jonin participating in the exam (the Blue commander), a squad of jonin candidates, three to five squads of chunin candidates, and a few dozen clones provided by the judges. That last hundred meters between us and the compound were over open ground. The time for stealth had passed.

"We're about to make the assault. Death Experience up in 10 seconds. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Attack!" Yasu, of course, could hear me, and Sachiko could too through the communications seal we used. As I said the word "Attack," I flared my presence up to a high setting, and directed my Death Experience at the outpost. I could see a pair of lookouts collapse. At a sprint, we cleared the ground, using Wind and Water jutsu to clear out any mines or traps, then leaped onto the wall. We sent a flurry of capture-bolas, a weapon designed for non-lethal take-down and incapacitation via seals, into the squad of enemies that had been on patrol when they were overwhelmed by my Death Experience.

"Yasu, break off and find the hostages, then get them out. I'm going for their commander," I said after we blew through a second story wall into a corridor. Pro-ninja tip; even if you blow through the entry-way, it could be trapped or defended. Blowing through a second (or third, depending on building height) story wall into a corridor, especially where there wasn't a window to sneak in, had the lowest probability of being trapped.

He nodded, and set off to the left, looking for the pair of physically small, genin sized chakra signatures given off by the clones pretending to be hostages. I meanwhile went right, towards the concentration of jonin level signatures. I passed a pair of collapsed chunin candidates who had been guarding the entrance to the room with the high level signatures, and slapped on capture-seals. In the room, there were a trio of jonin candidates, the Blue Commander, the Blue Leader, and a judge, all incapacitated and semi-catatonic. It looked like they had been able to at least resist my Presence at long range, as they had drawn weapons and arranged themselves in a defensive posture, but were overcome when I got closer.

Taking out a dull kunai with paint to simulate wounds, I "executed" the usurper's stand in, and used capture seals on the jonin and jonin candidates.

"Command center taken. Four officers captured, enemy leader executed," I reported to my teammates. "Yasu, what's happening?"

"Breaching the hostage room now. Hostages secure, I am returning to the fallback. Sachiko, can I get some cover? I'll be leaving how we came in."

"Sure. Good job, guys," I heard Sachiko say. And it really was. The op went down pretty much as well as could have been hoped. Hostages safely rescued, enemy leader dead, no casualties, total capture of remaining enemy forces.

"Alright, I'm going to pull back on the Presence. I think we got everyone inside the base. Time to see how many will turn to our side." With that, I dropped my Death Experience, and watched as everyone regained consciousness.

For most, it was a bit of a disturbing wake-up; no ninja likes to wake up unable to control their body after being knocked out, and the judge was the only one that wasn't restrained with a capture seal. For the examiner though, after he figured out what was going on, he clearly thought the situation hilarious. He wasn't openly laughing, but the scene was pretty funny.

One battle-hardened jonin, supposed commander of an entire faction's forces, and three experienced jonin candidates all captured, all glaring at me. All of them at least in their twenties. And then, me, grinning a bit, fourteen years old, not yet fully grown, having beaten them within minutes after overcoming not just them and their guards and over six hours worth of traps, but having beaten them without even being seen.

How's that for ninja!

"Gentlemen, your leader is dead. I am here to offer you an opportunity to join our team, the winning team, and show you're capable of more than fainting. What say you?" They were, of course, silent. The seal didn't let them talk.

"Oh, silly me, I forgot!" I said while making a handseal and triggering the "interrogation" mode of the capture seal. It still screwed with the nerves below the neck and the chakra system, but at least allowed them to talk. I could see them moving their jaws a bit as the numbness wore off. Then one of them, the group's commander who looked a bit like a Nara, spoke up.

"Hah. How irritating. Now I know why cousin Shikata was so cheerful, with you as a trump. I guess we'll join you."

"Fantastic. Now, let's collect the rest of the chunin candidate guards, and go turn the main combat troops. Forward for Red!"

Honestly, this childishness on my part was also part of the plan. While I wanted to win, and become a jonin, I also wanted to avoid the main combat forces. It was dangerous, uncomfortable and unnecessary. I much preferred working on my seals, training, and the occasional investigation or domestic operation. Relations with Sachiko in a military ninja unit would also have been much more difficult. And, to this goal of slacking being seen as a genius, politically important eccentric unsuited to larger military forces would be useful. Short of a major conflict brewing, I'd likely be able to avoid it.

After collecting and getting the allegiance of the chunin candidates, all save one with some anger management issues who we had to "kill", and Yasu handing off the hostages to their escort out of the combat zone, we proceeded to the main combat zone.

Coming through our ranks, I began to project glory towards myself and my allies, the futility of challenging us, and a rather large heaping of sheer power to show that I could back up what I said, then released a massive Flash-bang firework to make sure I had everyone's attention. At my suggestion, Red forces had withdrawn a bit, and I had everyone's attention. I cast a voice-amplifying wind jutsu and began to speak."

"Forces of the usurper! Your Lord is dead. Your commanders have changed sides. Those that follow their rightful ruler, and join us will be forgiven their misguided actions," I channeled pride, desire, rightfulness, hope for a better future. "Those that do not will be destroyed," at this, I channeled sheer Doom. Not quite Death, but more the idea that no matter what they try, they will fail. Having a lengthy death-sentence on my head in my past life, I was rather adept with this power too.

Those listening and feeling weren't thinking of this as an exam anymore. Oh sure, those at the edges of the zone, or those that were at the very top of their game might have resisted. But given the situation (their side had already lost), my influence, the defection of their strategic leadership, and now so many of them removing their blue sashes, only a few die-hards were willing to keep going, and they were quickly overwhelmed.

Our objective completed, our squad returned to the command post while the newly unified Northern Force got organized and went to the waiting zone until they could deploy to the "Southern Combat Region," where the Blue remnants and White forces were still in conflict.

Yasu, Sachiko and I launched our Custom Pelicans, and got an examiner to rule them within striking range in fifteen minutes. So for a few minutes, they flew circles above our battleground, as we looked over maps of the White Command Post and likely enemy locations. Ruled within range, we unleashed (imaginary) hell. Many of the examiners had served with Uzumaki Pelican support, and after we described what munitions we were loaded with, they quickly ruled a complete destruction while we put on a bit of a fireworks show by launching munitions into the air.

We purposefully left a mercenary company messenger post alone so that they could bring word of the "destruction" to the remaining White forces, most of whom chose to E&E (escape and evade) for at least some points. The White forces were simulating operating as mercenaries in a foreign area; a successful E&E back to Konoha meant at least avoiding losing those ninja, so it was worth something.

As the White forces melted away, the newly enlarged Red forces showed up, swallowed up the majority of the remaining Blue, and hunted down any White groups that hadn't ran fast enough. The conflict, which had been scheduled for a few days, was over before nightfall. We, as the architects of this victory, were pretty stoked. Our commander came over with a smile that seemed a bit exasperated.

"Congratulations," he stated.

"Thank you, commander," I replied with a grin. He sighed.

"You do realize you've completely broken this exam, don't you?" he asked. I shrugged in response.

"What can I do? We're just too awesome," I said smiling a bit more.

"Truly a troublesome squad. I suspect they'll re-run the exam starting tomorrow, but without you participating."

"Ah, I do apologize. Your plans will need to be re-worked."

"Yes. Well, if I can win a second time I'm fairly sure to be get the position I want, so it's not all bad."

"And you avoided any issues in having me assigned to you," I commented.

"I said no such thing," he protested fake-innocently with a smirk. I laughed. "Anyways, well done. Good luck with your promotion board; I don't think I need to say it, but it was interesting working with you. I'd like to do so again in the future, and will be strongly recommending your promotion to jonin."

"Thank you, sir," I said sincerely. That was a pretty hefty compliment. "I'll look forward to working together in the future as well."

It turned out that Shikata's suspicions were correct. We were told by an examiner that the exam was being repeated to get a better idea as to how others would perform, but that our squad was excused.

The promotion boards were pushed back a day, and so we had a full ten days before our boards, and a total of two weeks until the promotion ceremonies. From how Sachiko was looking at me, I figured that a lot of the time was going to be spent in my bedroom. Yasu picked up on her look and my grin, and told us he was going camping and training, and to contact him if anything came up.

In the back of my head a certain primordial entity just chuckled.

Chapter 40: Promotion

A rather raucous week and a half with Sachiko followed our victory in the exams. Of course, we didn't just spend time in the bedroom; while it was fun, and decent exercise for a civilian, we still trained a few hours every day to keep our edge. Still, the week was, to pardon the pun, fucking awesome.

Honestly, missing sex when I didn't have the hormonal drive for it, and was further lacking the physical capacity for it, was bad enough. As a teenager, with all the boost to my vitality that chakra gave, and Sachiko's propensity to flirt (or at least her equivalent of flirting), and most painfully her obvious willingness and physical contact… the fact I lasted so long is a testament to the strength of my meditations. After such a long dry-spell, it was great to just take some time off, relax, and try everything with my partner.

Granted, we didn't try everything. But we did try a lot. Sachiko was, if anything, more desperate than I. She was significantly more developed, and had been nursing her particular brand of what I eventually decided to call "semi-fanatical devotion with lustful intent" for several years. We experimented extensively, pushed both of our boundaries, and committed acts which were literally damning on at least three worlds I've since visited. The break was awesome, though I was glad for my regeneration; chafing would have brought things to an end earlier otherwise.

Towards the end of the week, I called back Yasu so we could discuss what type of squad we wanted to be in the future. Previously, we had been an upper level territorial trouble-shooting team. We covered a territory, and were typically fairly independent. We would normally receive mission requests from the local government organizations, or the occasional bulletin from Konohagakure's Intelligence department. We hunted missing nin, or forwarded reports of high level missing nin to Hunter squads. We mostly took on organized crime, the occasional mundane psychopath, some counterintelligence work, corporate espionage, that sort of thing.

The problem was that we weren't really fit to keep doing the same thing. It was a practically a given that we'd all be at least Tokujo by the end of the exams, and we weren't capable of the specialized performance needed.

Take investigations, for example. Before, we would make do with our own skills, and call in a specialist team, perhaps with Inuzuka or Aburame for tracking or forensic analysis, or Yamanaka for interrogation. As a top level territorial squad, we needed to be able to do all that, and more, while covering a larger area. Most areas didn't have top level territorial squads for this reason, and those that did, tended to have squads that were specifically formulated at the genin level to include three specialists, each capable of covering each other's weaknesses.

As powerful as my team was, we weren't true specialists, and lacked the bloodlines needed to do a truly great job. We'd have been sufficient, at least in time, but it would basically be a dead end for our ninja careers, and a waste of our potential. So we needed something else to talk about with the promotion board, a new specialty to focus on during our training at the jonin academy.

Other potential avenues had their own issues. Combat specialization or being an "Elite" Division Jonin Squad would make us far too well known too soon. Sachiko and Yasu were quite capable of taking on standard jonin in combat. With the Advanced Personal Armor System, or APAS, they were capable of giving even top jonin a challenge. With me backing them up, we were a terror to face.

Which was exactly the issue. We were strong enough that if we became well known for our strength, the enemy would form special units to counter us and take us out. Granted, we likely had more tricks than they'd account for, and the new semi-autonomous command seals built into our air-support gave us a load of back-up, but it was a situation I preferred to avoid. Frankly, those on the level of Madara, or one of the Kages, or their top assassins, were far too likely to be able to kill us regardless. And hostile villages would send such titans to strangle us in our proverbial cradles.

I was a powerhouse, with massive, controlled chakra combined with top level elemental manipulation and sealing unknown outside of the top echelons of the Uzumaki. But I hadn't taken anything into the range of myth and legend, getting by with extra chakra and a bit of cleverness. I couldn't match the First Hokage's forming of a forest with a quick jutsu, the Second's ridiculous control of water, or Madara's ability to genjutsu the fucking Kyubi with a single look. Even Sarutobi's ability to extemporize jutsu and use his control over multiple elements to imitate bloodline techniques was beyond me.

Were their legends exaggerated? Perhaps. I'd never seen these people cut loose, go all out. More worrying though, all the legends likely had abilities they kept in reserve. And the ones I just listed are only the legends of a single village.

I was in no way ready to challenge these monsters. But in my full power, I had no doubt I'd be capable of just as legendary acts, and so I had to take these things seriously. I was close, and could give them pause, but I wasn't up to their level. Not yet. I had no desire to put myself in a position likely to challenge them anytime soon.

What might normally happen at this stage in our careers was that we'd split up, at least some of the time. Again, not really an option; they were my retainers, we were a diplomatic exchange unit with what was now one of the most fearsome militaries in the known world, and most importantly there was no way I was giving up what was mine.

That really limited our options, and other possible tracks weren't easy either. We were too young and effective at field-work to go into administration or analysis. Much of the research we did or even could do was classified by Uzushiogakure (or, alternatively, by Konohagakure), so that was out. And we had none of the military experience required for the ranks we would fill if we went into the Legion Ninja Auxiliary.

After crossing out most options, and taking into account our political position, there was one specialization we picked out.

Diplomacy.

I know, I know. I was not exactly the most diplomatic of people. My first instinct with Water was to use a WMD (even if I was later proven justified). My actions within Konohagakure included some fairly risky maneuvers when I arrived, and that was with me knowing that we depended on their goodwill for defense. It all worked out in the end, but it was a tad fraught.

As I grew stronger, my penchant for daredevil diplomacy only got worse, not that I had all that many options to use it. Honestly, it got to the point where I realized that it wasn't just the standard arrogance of the powerful, but partially an effect of my chakra density and volume telling me that I'm in some way grander. I took measures to limit this tendency once I knew about it, of course, but that sort of attitude is rarely desirable in a diplomat.

In all other respects though, becoming part of the Diplomatic Division, itself part of the Strategic Intelligence Corps, was the right move. The Diplomatic Division included three groups within it. The first, and actually the largest, was the Diplomatic Division HQ&Support or the Diplomatic HQS. This consisted mostly of chunin intelligence analysts who collated intelligence from all across Konohagakure's massive information gathering apparatus, and distilled it into something useful. The administration and trainers for the Diplomatic Division also fell into this group, as did a number of advisers for the Hokage. Needless to say, this was not the group we'd be joining.

The next largest group were the Diplomatic Guards. These were typically jonin or tokujo led chunin combat units that were extensively trained in diplomatic protocol and VIP protection. These guys were pretty humorless, and when I met them gave me the strangest impression. It was like someone had taken the British Buckingham guard, and a bunch of ninja, and somehow merged them. Fairly prestigious, they tended to recruit from longstanding veterans, and often selected those from the more upper-class clans who had served with the Legions and had experience dealing was the more difficult lords or samurai. We were, frankly, too high ranking to be part of a Guards unit for anyone below the greatest lords or a Daimyo, but were too young to guard such people. So we wouldn't be going there.

The group we decided we wanted to join was the Arbitrators; as is so often the nature of such things, they were both the smallest and the most interesting of any group within the Diplomatic Division. The Arbitrators filled a very odd role. In a dispute, one or both parties might hire an arbitration team from Konohagakure. Arbitrators would then fill a neutral role, and help all parties come to an agreement that they could accept.

Arbitrators might also be hired as advisers or even advocates, and it wasn't unheard of for two arbitration teams from the same village to be facing each other over a negotiating table. They would often be used when a merchant house, for example, wanted to negotiate with the local government or some nobles, but lacked sufficient social standing to do so. There was always a vague hint of threat in ninja involvement too which added a certain lubricating frisson to the negotiations. Often things were tense enough by the time Arbitrators were brought in that they had to be on extreme guard, and many assassinations and assaults (both by those in negotiation and third parties) had been prevented by arbitration team members.

Of course, despite our supposed "neutrality", Arbitrators were still loyal to Konohagakure. So, while trying to maintain an appearance of strict neutrality, they were also responsible for intelligence gathering and secretly shaping any agreements such that they were beneficial to Konohagakure. Arbitrators were allowed a limited authority to make deals for Konohagakure as well; for example, a trade deal might include a guaranteed rate on insurance or ninja guards, or possibly an investment from or sales channel through Konohagakure. Some arbitration contracts strictly forbid the Arbitrators from acting as an interested party; other times, it was one of the services that the clients specifically desired.

When I heard about them, I decided this was the perfect job for us. It was basically what the Jedi in Star-Wars did, except that as ninja we were more like grey Jedi, or Sith pretending to be Jedi. And I meant that to the full extent; travel, adventure, combat, trade, economics, subtle intelligence gathering, even assassination were skills required of a good Arbitrator. It was perfect for us, and would teach me what I needed to be a more effective Lord and Consul.

While the Arbitration job sounded awesome, it was also highly competitive. I had no real worries that my team would get it, though. One of the main reasons I was sure we could get the position was that Arbitrators needed to have a high social rank. Between that and the high performance requirements, the arbitration sub-division was always understrength.

But as a full Lord and Consul of Whirlpool, I had enough rank to represent people in front of a Daimyo, or organize negotiations between rival Daimyo's courts if necessary. Only a handful of Konoha ninja were of similar social rank, and most of them were senior members within the more military or shadowy parts of the hierarchy, since those allowed them more influence and power within the village. There was no way they would have wanted to refuse me the position.

As for access to training and intelligence, it was great. We could take pretty much any training courses we wanted in our downtime, and frequently had long stretches for personal use in between missions. We got access to whatever intelligence was needed for each mission, and had general access to intelligence and analysis on the national and multinational level, which meant that my companies and fiefdom would get the benefits from that too.

It turned out, the examination board agreed with me. I was promoted to jonin, while Sachiko and Yasu each made tokujo, and we were assigned to training starting the next week. The training was a bit odd; partially because the Arbitrators were such a small group, with less than a half dozen jonin squads at any time, we actually had a unique training program and we were typically the only students. Our trainers tended to be Arbitrators taking time off in between missions or analytical experts with a focus on the subject material. This was actually pretty fantastic, since it meant they taught as quickly as we could learn. We had a year set aside for training, and I wanted to get as much as possible out of it.

Chapter 41: Training

The training was more rigorous than I had imagined. We learned the standard diplomatic conventions for all the different nations, as well as any lord's court which deviated significantly from the norm. We learned how to talk, behave, what to wear, the proper gifts, ways of eating, and what to eat in what order to deliver what message. And that was just the beginning before progressing further into poetry, song, dance, theater, literature, both doing so ourselves and appreciation of the same for as many cultures as they could cram in. Some of it was actually quite good, and I memorized enough of the best literature that I could, in a future life, plagiarize (if that was even a possible cross-dimensional crime) for fame and profit.

Sachiko and Yasu, lacking my mental techniques, had a bit of a harder time, though we were all taught advanced Memory Palace and other memorization techniques to improve our recall and begin making our minds harder to interrogate. The mental representation techniques were a bit strange for me; by combining mind and soul, I had in a way skipped that stage. I had no worries of my mind degrading, and the amount or similarity of memories didn't really impact how easily or quickly I could access them. I knew my soul and mind on an instinctive level, and that was enough. As for protecting my mind and memories, apart from my own unique being I was protected by the highest level seals. What the mental techniques did improve however was my ability to visualize, organize and cross-link thoughts and memories, somewhat improving the rate at which I could connect concepts and innovate. In other words, while not necessary, or even particularly helpful for individual memories, concepts or thoughts, the mental organization was useful as a kind of database and library.

I had plenty to add to my mind as well. Apart from the cultural education and diplomatic conventions, there was just so much trivia. For example, we had to learn more than a thousand insignia for the noble houses as well as prominent merchants, guilds, and townships. Honestly, I without my perfect memory formation technique it would have been a real pain, and absolutely impossible for a regular person without the techniques we were taught. With those, however, and my own childhood as the somewhat distant scion of a noble house, I excelled in the niceties.

Sachiko and Yasu actually had it comparatively easy. They already knew how to be retainers to an Uzumaki lord, which was most of what was required of them, and my grandfather Uzumaki Kenichi likely made even the most formal of our trainers seem uncouth. Suffice to say, our trainers were more than pleased with our progress.

The not-so-niceties were very interesting as well. We were taught standard jonin ciphers, keys, recognition signs, signals, battle-cant, and memorized lists of supply caches and contacts. We learned more about poisons and subtle assassination, stealth, infiltration, covert intelligence gathering, how to read body language, even some seduction and counter-seduction. Sachiko took a specialist subtle genjutsu training, while Yasu learned to be even more of a ghost. For my part, I trained in my swordsmanship with the White Fang and learned all the varieties of formalized duel etiquette.

We spent a full six weeks on a diplomatic bodyguard course, in case it was necessary to protect a VIP; I hated it, and banned either of my retainers from sacrificing themselves for anyone, myself included (though I doubted they'd obey in the latter situation). I tested out of the seal-communications and secure-space creation sections of the training designed to teach us how to set up secure rooms and communications to report to Konoha. The section on detecting bugs and other listeners or watchers was quite informative, however, and led to a security overhaul of our own consulate.

Perhaps the most interesting section of our training, however, came from our trade and economics training. It wasn't something that had been covered in detail at any point before, and my own efforts were based almost entirely on my own best guesses and precepts I'd remembered from my first life. Comparing historical analysis and a basic knowledge of a semi free-market capitalism with a feudal-renaissance filled with ninja-sorcerers wasn't exactly a perfect fit, however, and I'd always been an engineering/science type rather than a grand financial genius.

The economics training supported my belief that the world had once been significantly more advanced; their economic and political theory was very well developed. By the end of the year I had no doubt I could whip out a dissertation-worthy work on similar societies. My "assistant Consul" from Whirlpool, who was a trade and policy expert, was always happy to discuss these matters as well, and provide a more Uzushio-centric viewpoint.

Of course, the Arbitrator training wasn't the only thing I did during the year. I also trained extensively outside of it. I had decided to focus on three things:

First, I wanted the kage bunshin. I doubted it was as it had been described in manga/anime of my original world, but even if it were just a bunshin capable of jutsu that was hugely helpful and thus worth learning.

Second, I wanted to figure out how to achieve the Hiraishin. Instantaneous movement at low chakra cost was a "holy grail" jutsu, and since Kushina hadn't come to Konohagakure to train Minato in sealing, he wasn't going to be developing it.

Third, I wanted to become a sage. Sage powers were a massive boost, and represented a type of chakra knowledge and understanding that I wanted for no other reason than bragging right. I had strong suspicions though that those techniques would be somewhat applicable across all of reality, regardless of universe or plane. Plus, if that toe-rag Naruto could achieve it, I had no doubts I could as well.

Getting my hands on the kage bunshin actually turned out to be hilariously easy. The basic shadow clone technique wasn't restricted, only the Mass Shadow Clone technique, with the basic being available to jonin. I had learned the technique within a day, and by the end of the week had reverse engineered the Mass Shadow Clone and Exploding Shadow Clone techniques.

It was a good news/ bad news situation. Good news, the clones had high combat potential. Though a bit slower and weaker than I was (and massively less durable), they were otherwise combat ready, which was about what I expected. Because of the durability limitations, they were more limited in the extent of their chakra reinforcement, both physical and mental. The clones could use jutsu however, and think independently, both of which were the main restrictions for elemental clones. With the exploding clone technique, they were dangerous to dispel in close combat, and the clones were even capable of a limited version of my Death Experience. I could make a load of them with my chakra reserves, and did discover they were capable of solid transformations. I could make a host of clones capable of fighting chunin, or a few that could act as jutsu artillery or strike-craft pilots. I could also use the clones to test seals I developed that fell in between the "test yourself" and the "test in a special testing chamber" danger scale, or search through large volumes of information for something specific.

The bad news was that the clones did not have some special memory transfer ability. What they did have was the ability to transfer a few images via chakra resonance, but it was a specific technique that dispelled the clone. Expert users could build in the ability to do the image transfer on death. So, while they could scout, they couldn't train for me. Furthermore, they were somewhat focused on whatever I wanted them to do when they were made, and were significantly less intelligent than I. At a guess, it had something to do with how much of my mental chakra or chi I used, and how well I structured it. Thankfully, being bright enough to begin with and having an excellent idea of my mental chakra patterns, I was capable of kage bunshin that were reasonably intelligent and useful.

Long story short, the kage bunshin was useful, and represented a great combat multiplier (literally a multiplier, I was about two to six times as effective just knowing this technique, depending on the situation) but didn't represent anything game changing. I was happy that it was so useful, but disappointed that it wasn't some magic "I win at all ninja arts because I have the most Chakra!" technique. I had no real desire for "fair play" after so long as a ninja, not that I had much before then either.

The disappointment grew as I wasted months on the Hiraishin. I could go fast. Really fast. But the problem was I couldn't get anything instantaneous, and the speed scaled with a bit more than a squared amount of chakra. In other words, doubling the speed required about four times as much chakra. Actually it was closer to six times as much chakra, the equation for the jutsu seemed to be something along the lines of:

[speed] = S

[Chakra used] =(S)^2 + (S) + [constant].

To make things worse, as I started to push the jutsu and seals I was using, the chakra use started to get less efficient. It was maddening.

I tried a number of things beyond seals that basically translated to "put the thing you affect there", but had to tap out when I started getting too close to seals that transited through other dimensions. I had a theory that by moving to another plane or dimension, one with a perfect and consistent mapping function to that of the Naruto-verse I was in, I might be able to cheat. In other words, that there was some dimension out there with distances and vectors that perfectly correlated to the distances in the dimension I was already in. If that was the case, I could "step" into that other dimension, transit a few feet, "step" back into my dimension, and end up traveling miles until I was only a few feet away from where I wanted to be.

The problem was I was unsure if I should be transiting dimensions or universes or planes (there was a difference), and mistakes in this sort of thing tended to result in Cthulhu-type entities taking notice. It was in fact risky enough that it was illegal for an Uzumaki to research without the proper contingencies. Even my borderline research ended up losing several clones to the point I never even got any chakra resonance images from them. No way was I using that.

So I shelved the Hiraishin for a time, and used a bit of that time to practice the shunshin, specifically using it without hand-seals. Once I had that mastered, I intended to try partial shunshin to accelerate my body in combat and make myself a real speed demon. Unfortunately, my chakra control, though excellent, was still adjusting to my body changing from puberty, and I reached the limitations of what was safe until I finished growing physically. So no partial shunshin for me.

Part of the reason I spent time on the shunshin was that I had no idea how to train the Sage arts. I didn't have a summons, and certainly not one with experience with senjutsu. I knew that Jiraiya did, but Minato was the heir to those techniques. My grandfather had the Sea-Hawk summons, but I wasn't sure if they used sage mode and even if they did, one of my uncles had already signed the contract years ago. Frankly, the number of contracts available versus the number of ninja that wanted them meant that I was pretty screwed; at least unless I risked my life with a contract-less summoning technique to summon myself to the demi-plane of whatever summoning animal fit me. I decided that was too risky though, and so spent the month I was somewhat training the shunshin to search the library for any hint as to how to become a sage without a summons to both teach you and prevent natural chakra poisoning.

Finally, finally, I figured it out, and when I did I wanted to smack myself. The secret was in what everyone was told when they start tree-walking: "By mastering tree-walking, you can truly master any jutsu." I doubted that anyone else had figured it out from Hashirama's semi deranged ramblings; they just liked the saying since it sounds wise.

The saying was, in fact, the first Hokage's though, and that is what made me look at it a bit deeper, since he was the only person I found who was reputably reported to have developed Sage powers without a summons to help. The man was apparently something of an idiot-savant when it came to chakra. People thought it was because he could use Mokuton (tree release), but after my realization I believed that Mokuton came about because of his earth and water abilities and large exposure to natural tree chakra as a child.

When I describe Hashirama as an idiot savant, I mean that quite literally. He was notorious for taking things at face value and exhibited several other signs of the syndrome; in fact, the Senju on a whole showed a predilection for at least mild savant syndrome which led to both their random areas of expertise, as well as some of their slightly less public issues (or, in the case of Tsunade's alcoholism, more public issues). As the Senju inbred more and more, the negative aspects began to overwhelm the positive, partially leading to their decline.

As for Hashirama, he was famous for his inspired understanding of chakra. What most people don't realize is how much savants have contributed, despite whatever issues they had. For example, in my original life, on Earth, much of mathematics and engineering owed their progress in actually making calculations to savants, at least until the advent of the computer. The logarithmic and sin/cos/tan charts used during the 19th century, for example, were often generated by savants gathered from all over Great Britain under a number of mathematicians at Oxford and Cambridge. Similar practices were in place in France and elsewhere. The famous concept of "Mentats," a type of artificial savant used as human computers to replace electronic ones in Herbert's Dune may have been based on the historical use of savants to perform the kinds of calculations we now perform by machine.

After I figured out that Hashirama was a savant, I realized that he had in fact hidden the secret to the sage arts in his description of tree walking. Whether this was on purpose or lack of communications for certain concepts was uncertain.

Someone who mastered tree-walking didn't actually use any of their own chakra. They used the tree's chakra. Nature's chakra. Anyone capable of this was capable (in theory, at least) of high-efficiency healing that used the patient's own energy. They were (again, at least in theory) capable of manipulating anything with chakra, first with a touch, then at range. That was an honestly terrifying possibility, and what I decided to aim for. They could use jutsu in the right environment without using a drop of their own chakra.

One of the important differences between Nature chakra and that of a person was the potential; Nature chakra can be thought of as unfiltered light, while that of a person is a specific color. This meant that it was harder to block a technique that uses Nature chakra, since a person's chakra was only really effective at blocking their own bandwith and an opposing bandwith. So if I became a good enough Sage I would have been able to remotely destabilize chakra effects (including enemy jutsu), create my own effects at range by using natural chakra manipulation (something enemies couldn't track), and empower my justsu even more.

In other words, a sage could make stronger techniques, do so with less energy, and can even potentially manipulate others' chakra, or at least that of the environment for some truly epic possibilities. And that was just the beginning; I had ideas as to how to use Sage Arts to perform what was basically magic. It all came from tree-walking. Of course it wasn't all that easy; I already knew, for example, that the source of natural chakra effected the energy signal (or color of the light, to use the previous analogy), so unlike using my own chakra, using a sage technique could be easier or harder depending on where I was. But I had a direction for the next major upgrades to my ninja capabilities, and so I dove right in.

After I developed that theory, I spent months meditating while sitting sideways on a tree, trying to develop the technique. And I succeeded. Granted, it was the absolute lowest form of Sage arts. All I was capable of was wall-walking on a number of surfaces without any chakra use. It was useful for stealth or those without much chakra reserves, but not all that great. I was having real difficulties accessing the tree's chakra, possibly because I was more oriented with Wind and Water than with Earth.

Overall, it improved my chakra manipulation and recovery, and I began a long term project as to how much natural chakra I could control, for how long, at what range, and how much I could absorb safely. It was painfully slow progress, but I felt that it was reasonable for the two hours a day I spent on the task and total lack of any guiding information. I expected to be capable of something useful after about a year, and something astounding a couple years after that. That was slow for me, but fast enough to be worth pursuing.

As a further bonus, while I was meditating I figured out what I was missing with the Hiraishin. It was a time-space technique. I had thought that the "time" was a holdout from when people understood the relation between time and space, that it had some meaning due to the Elemental Nations' history. I was wrong. The Hiraishin worked, or at least this was my theory, by taking some defined space and making the entire region indeterminably defined by time, making it also undefined in space. The trick was controlling the space of that non-definition, effectively superimposing the space along some vector, and then reinserting the defined space into time at the lowest energy location, which would be by the target seal.

That's why Minato was the "Yellow Flash"; for a non-moment of time, he occupied all the space along that vector and none of it, resulting in some weird visual artifact effect. It was actually, from my initial calculations, a fucking genius solution. Oh, dangerous as hell, and vulnerable to some exotic attacks and a number of sealing-field interactions, but both the sealing knowledge and especially chakra requirements were pretty low compared to the Hiraishin's functionality.

My own version would be a lot safer and a bit more chakra intensive. For example, I planned a triangulation technique to come out anywhere within a space defined by the seals. But that alone would be a major challenge, since it would have to respond to change the effected region rather than act as a beacon.

Still, I had a starting off point; the rest was engineering.

By the end of the year, I hadn't quite figured out the seals I needed, let alone the array including the safety features, but I was making a lot of progress; I had a very productive collaboration going on with Hikaru jii-san. When I did finish was going to ask the Head Priest of the Uzushiogakure sealers to take a look, since he specialized in these kinds of effects and liked me enough.

Perhaps most usefully, I was finally really advancing my seals intuition. Before, I was advancing my sealing knowledge, but not really the level at which I understood how seals and reality interacted. It was more "Applied Seals Engineering" than the kind of "Sealing Scientific Philosophy" needed to advance as a sealer. As the year of training came to an end, I finally broke through and achieved Seventh level intuition, making myself a High Master of sealing at the age of fifteen.

The Head Priest actually sent me a note that I "wasn't the youngest to achieve High Mastery, since (he) knew (I) would be wondering." He went on to note though that he was very impressed, and with a bit of humor that I was obviously a credit to their teaching. My prototype Hiraishin seals were finally done and basically waiting review and testing by the Uzushiogakure Sealing Department, so I expected to be able to start using those anywhere from a few weeks to a few months after I finished my Arbitrator training.

As the year of training wound to a close, our training focused on current events and political briefings. Generally, not too much had changed. Fire Country had a strong alliance with Whirlpool/Water Country, mirrored by Konohagakure's alliance with Uzushiogakure and all of the subordinate ninja and samurai forces. Fire Country had further stabilized the alliances with Grass, Waterfall and Rice, and the traditional alliance with Tea Country was going strong.

Whirlpool, which was then also the capital province of Water Country, had stabilized its own alliance block with the Lands of Hotsprings and Noodles. Frost Country was increasingly influenced by Water-based trading companies, which had largely taken control of the sea-going trade by the combination of Cyclone seals meaning well-protected ships and sets of navigation and seafaring seals meaning faster, more robust vessels capable of carrying larger cargoes. The new air-mail business was showing large profits, and the Uzushiogakure fielded air-force was unmatched and unchallenged. Water Country itself was completely pacified, and happier than ever under its new, relatively enlightened rule. The neighboring island nations Nagi and O'uzu were beginning the long diplomatic dance to improve relations and perhaps form an alliance.

Wind and River Countries were still trying to recover from their losses at Hanzo the Salamander's hands following their poorly executed invasion of Rain Country, while Earth Country was too busy trying to replace losses due to their war with Wind and River to cause much trouble. Earth Country was in fact dealing with a small rebellion in the Western Mountain region near the border with Bear and Mountain countries.

Wind Country was dealing with a rather more serious rebellion, verging on civil war, in their Western River Basin region, which was one of the wealthiest and densest populated regions of the country and somewhat difficult to invade given the massive desert in between it and the Capital or Hidden Sand village. Their Daimyo had just sent in an army to stabilize the situation; if it failed, the situation was likely to become a full on civil war.

Lightning Country meanwhile was still agitated by their reduced status in the world, and both it and Kumo were becoming more and more belligerent. This linked to a number of "bandit" and "pirate" actions, and Frost Country was a hotbed of subterfuge and secret conflict. The Fire-Water alliance was interested in curtailing Lightning influence and capability.

Other than the concern with Lightning, Fire Country, and thus Konohagakure, were interested in three main areas. First, they were interested in establishing friendlier relations with Iron Country. Iron Country was a major source of not just metals, but Chakra metal. It was also now bordered on all sides by Fire Country allies, and under a bit of pressure to establish deeper trade ties including favorable tariffs or even free trade across the border. This went somewhat against their policy of neutrality, and was a major subject of discussion.

Second, Fire Country was interested in establishing even basic relations with Rain Country. Hanzo had conducted a coup – well, theoretically, bandits overcame the Daimyo's convoy and killed him, his family, and a hundred-strong company of veteran chakra-wielding samurai but everyone knew the truth. Bandit forces capable of taking on elite chakra active companies didn't exist. Following that "tragedy", Hanzo had himself declared Daimyo. He then totally closed the border to lawful traffic, which was a problem as Rain Country included the major land-route into Earth Country, as well as access to Claw and Fang Countries. His regime was rumored to be conducting purges of anyone with any loyalties to other lands.

Furthermore, and least acceptable, Rain was full of disreputable missing ninja and ronin samurai leading bandit bands. Hanzo had a non-interference policy so long as they raided outside of Rain, but aggressively pursued any forces chasing these criminals. Fire and Grass were displeased with the raids, and with Hanzo's uncooperative nature. Wind, Earth, River and Claw had been raided as well, but were less capable of complaining given recent events and military weaknesses. River country was, however, in talks with Fire Country, which if successful might be cause for more pressure against Hanzo.

The Daimyo were unhappy with the fact that Hanzo declared himself Daimyo as well, since it was a bad precedent. And Hanzo's personal power made him something of a threat. If a diplomatic solution failed over the next few months, it was entirely likely that Hanzo would be facing a multinational land-grab backed by strong ninja support and, in the case of joint Fire and Grass forces, air-strikes. The initial diplomatic teams, sent to deal with "Hanzo, Lord of the Hidden Rain Village," had been sent away and forbidden from returning; new teams formed to deal with "Hanzo, Regent of Rain" were en-route.

Third, Fire Country was interested in relations with the Land of Rivers. Although Wind Country had established better relations there a few years prior, the bad taste between them over the failure of the Rain Campaign had cooled relations, and improved the standing of both the pro-Fire and isolationist factions within River's internal politics. Fire Country was looking to improve relations, not least because it would secure the majority of the western border.

Apart from the major political events, there was rather a lot of interesting events for trade and merchant houses. The breaking of the pirates operating in Water-Country and the new industry developments in Whirlpool and Water Country had led to a massive expansion of sea-faring trade, with commensurate increases in trade and merchant activity in general. A number of negotiations were available due to this.

Overall, when my team finally finished our training as Arbitrators, it was a good time to be in the diplomatic/negotiations business.

Chapter 42: The Gathering Storm

"So, you're offering transportation for our goods, with a price of one part in four of our carried cargoes, said part not to be less than a quarter-koban per five tons of ship, pro-rated for partial loads, with a minimum cargo of a quarter of a hundred-twenty ton ship..." one of the merchants I was stuck supervising droned on.

The first few of these negotiations proved quite fun. I mean, every bit of the deal that I got better terms on meant more money in my pocket. Often a lot more. Then it lost its novelty, people realized they couldn't take wild advantage of me, and I became a glorified merchant with ninja training.

See, one of the reasons I was a preferred shipping Arbitrator was that I tended to put my trade ships in their convoys. I typically got twenty percent of the entire convoy value; ten percent for protection (my ships carried small cannon-seal armed speed-boats for defense), and another ten percent for the service of having current market prices as relayed by my factors via communication seal. Though that amount could and did vary on a variety of factors, including length of journey, weather and pirate risk factors, etc.

But boy was it boring. And because I created so much value, pretty much all the arbitration work I saw for months was shipping.

I remembered when I was a kid. Maybe eleven years old or so. We were in chapel (compulsory at my school), and someone's Dad had come in to give a talk about what they did. Yes, we had a good dose of religion, and then a good dose of life-lesson.

It was very British.

Anyway, this guy gets up in front of us all, and takes out this thick pad of paper, bound with a flexible plastic spine and cover. There were hundreds of pages, about a full printer-paper package's worth, almost exploding with various sticky pads coming off at all angles. And this guy proudly started to talk about his career as a lawyer. Specifically, a shipping contract lawyer. He described how interesting his job was, how he methodically accounted for every possibility. If the shipped coffee spoiled what penalties there were. Inspection of the coffee on either end. Time schedules. Costs. Cost sharing. Liability. Allowed routes and ports. Disciplinary record limitations on the crew. And so on.

To be honest, it was actually a great presentation. I'd never really thought about the subject before. I learned a lot. It was, from an educational standpoint, valuable and interesting.

I swore that day I would never do shipping contracts.

I became immortal, learned (ninja) magic, destroyed nations, changed the course of history. I was a titan of that age, and living the dream of many an otaku back on Earth.

And what did I end up doing after all of that? Fucking shipping contracts.

I just… had no words. It was so boring that Kurama had literally put himself into a coma. Fucking shipping contracts, evil enough to beat the Kyubi. The chakra beast hadn't even lasted a week, the lucky fox; I wished I could put myself in a coma until it was all over too. That was all I could say. Oh, they were just as bad as I'd feared.

Even worse, I was getting better at them. At first, it took me a week to go through the negotiation and post "mission" analysis. Then, I could do two a week, then three. After a few months, half the time I was finished by lunch. Which just meant that I would get even more fucking shipping contract missions.

I swore, if I somehow ended up Konoha's shipping contract expert, I was going to kill someone.

Literally. To get out of that twisted reflection of a groundhog day scenario, I'd have happily murdered a lot of people. Preferably our enemies, but I was starting the think that maybe meditating inside a prison cell would be less tiresome.

I considered all this as I continued to guide our collective progress through the latest shipping contract while on autopilot myself. I knew the final result. The goods supplier would pay one part in five, or twenty percent, to the ship owner. I would get one part in five. The insurers (an Uzumaki bank in which I had heavily invested) would get one part in ten.

Spoilage would be split between the factor and the ship-owners, partially coming out of the portion they in turn paid the crew, so long as it was below a tenth. If it was more than a tenth, it would come out of the ship-owner's portion, then the factor's portion, then my portion, but would be recouped by the insurance at one half the destination or median price for those goods (whichever was lower) for spoilage over a fifth, subject to inspection and investigation.

See? I was being corrupted. It was like the Borg, or some sort of memetic cognitohazard. Soon I would be standing in a temple telling young ninjas in training about how they too could enter the exciting world of shipping contracts!

Maybe I should start sending a clone to these things, I mused. Technically, dereliction of duty. Practically, a sanity saving measure.

I was considering having one of my seals "accidentally discharge" to get me out of there when Sachiko interrupted.

"Sir, there's something you need to see," she said.

Bless her. Sachiko was the best.

"Oh, how terrible," I said, only able to keep from laughing in glee because she pinched me. "Excuse me, gentlemen. My assistant, Tokujonin Hisakawa Yasu, will be taking over the negotiations. He has my full confidence." With that, I stood and left the room, not even giving them time to protest. More importantly, not giving Yasu the opening to prevent my leaving.

Both the merchants and my poor assistant were becoming wise to how I would leave for "emergencies" and spend the rest of the afternoon in "necessary strategic consultations" with Sachiko in our bedroom. The merchants had learned that if I was that bored, I'd often give up as much as five percent, a full quarter of my cut, just to get them out the door. Unfortunately, that meant they tried to make things even worse, at least until I realized I could just ditch after delegating to Yasu.

I left the room trailed by Sachiko. As soon as the door was shut my shoulders slumped. "Oh, Sachiko, thank god. I was going insane. So, where exactly is this emergency?" I asked, waggling my eyebrows suggestively.

Sachiko shook her head. "There's an actual emergency. You're needed back at the residence."

As an aside, we weren't even posted somewhere nice. We were, instead, in a second tier port on the southern peninsular region of Fire Country, bordering the Kanashii ocean. The port was rapidly expanding without the perennial issue of Water Country pirates/privateers, and responsible for an increasing portion of Fire's trade with Tea, Sea, Crimson, Moon, and various other Countries that also either bordered or were islands in the Kanashii ocean.

But for all its importance for trade, it lacked culture to enjoy or a surfeit of high ranked ninja to train with. The dinners with the local merchant powers were much more chore than pleasure.

Sachiko was referring to the secured residence, part of the property where we had set up our trade mission. If she couldn't mention it without being there, then it was serious.

I sighed. When I prayed for deliverance, no matter the source, I wasn't serious.

Soon enough we entered the residence.

"So, what is it?" I asked.

"Priority message," she replied. "Significant troop buildup in Lightning."

I snorted. "So what's new?" They'd been sabre rattling pretty noisily for over a year and a half, but I didn't expect them to do anything about it.

"They've established widespread cloud cover using jutsu," she replied. "Reports from infiltrators are that multiple legions have left barracks and are headed for the border. A low-pass by an aerial asset showed similar indications of mass mobilization from Hidden Cloud before it was destroyed. Grain is being distributed from the granaries, and the Lightning ports are empty. The Daimyo is not in residence at his palace."

"Oh, fuck a duck," I swore. "What are the reports from Frost?"

"They were reporting another surge of violence. We thought it was the usual, but we're not hearing from several of our listening posts at the border. The chakra-laced fog would block most communications, but I think we have to assume the worst."

"So it's not just a war-game, but a full on invasion," I noted as we entered our war-room. It was equipped with numerous screens for different video conferences, priority message boards for orders from command, tickers and chatrooms showing real-time intelligence reports and analysis, maps showing allied and assumed enemy locations, and various images from active flight cameras. Far too many of the last showed fog.

"It looks like," she agreed.

"Are any of our assets overhead?" I asked. Over the years my fiefdom's contribution to aerial superiority had grown, as was perhaps only natural considering I invented the subject, and Hikaru jii-san was among its top pioneers. Nearly all of my fiefdom's taxes were paid off by our contributions, both research as well as pilots and aircraft, to Uzushio's air power.

"One of our Ospreys based out of Hidden Leaf should be overhead one of their assumed gathering points within the hour."

"The new variant?"

She smiled. "Yes."

That was great. The new variant was a surveillance optimized Osprey which jii-san and I had been working on. It was specifically designed to counteract anti-surveillance attempts. Particularly clever were the networked system of bio and chakra mimetic sparrows and mice, with larger owls and moles to act as control nodes and long-distance repeaters. Some of their communication channels should be capable of piercing through the fog, which some sacrificial probes had shown was being kept far enough off of the ground to allow the Lightning forces to know where they were and where they were going.

The new system was pretty expensive, but it was the height of foolishness to assume that no one would come up with any way of reducing or removing our aerial advantage. For Uzushio it was less of an issue; a ship, or fleet, could only generate so much fog, and we could just hammer the whole area. On land, with water chakra trapped between the hills and valleys, the region was simply too large to efficiently bombard.

I fully familiarized myself with the situation, and then waited anxiously. There was really nothing I could do or contribute until we got images. Or didn't get images, but I was hoping for a successful first combat usage of our designs.

And then we had image, and even sound. We were watching a fort and supply depot near the border. If Lightning was trying anything, this was a natural gathering point from which to re-equip, stocking up on food and water before launching the invasion.

And Lightning, it seemed, was doing just that. To make it more serious, judging from the flags, their Daimyo was there, as was their Kage. Clearly this was a "do or die" moment politically, and even accounting for their high dispersion, the size of the army was estimated to be about twenty percent of their total forces. Considering this was just one of the border forts, and taking into account the number of "mercenaries" and "rogue ninja" active in Frost before hand, and our best estimates were that sixty percent of Lightning's standing army had been mobilized for the attack.

It seemed that Fire and Whirlpool-Water's joint economic pressures had had a result. Just not the one we wanted, where Lightning accepted the new reality, reduced its militaristic nature, and joined us in trade and prosperity. Instead, they were throwing the dice on one last gasp of imperialism. I doubted it would work, but it could easily spark another continent spanning war.

Soon enough, a command meeting was called. Given that the current surveillance was coming from a Seal-Hawk Island Guard flight, and my own position as consul, sealer, advisor and lord, I was invited. This was an initial Uzushiogakure conference, where we decided how we wanted to react before we then added Konoha and Fire Country to the discussion.

Kazuo-sama started the discussion off as Whirlpool's reigning lord. "It seems that Lightning has finally made their move," he said. "Let us discuss our response. Though before that, Uzumaki Hikaru and Daichi, you have my thanks, and that of our nation, for the timely and extensive surveillance you have provided."

We bowed in response.

"So," he continued. "What are your recommendations?"

Chapter 43: Terrible Swift Sword

Strategic bombing was an interesting military concept. Basically, the idea is that you crush the enemy's ability to fight by bombing the fuck out of them. Could it break up formations, make peoples' lives miserable, hinder resupply, and be a general nuisance? Sure.

Could it win a war?

Well, it depended on who you asked, but generally, no. Despite all the sound and fury, whether it was artillery (World War I, II, Korea) or aircraft (World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan), they didn't win the fight against a dedicated enemy. They were force multipliers, yes. But strategic bombing effectiveness was historically overstated by bomber commands; post-analysis often showed only one-third (or less) of the expected performance.

Take Korea: even with all the bombing the US did in Korea (and we did a lot), it wasn't enough. Nor was the destruction in World War II Japan enough to take them out of the fight (at least without nuclear weapons). US analysis post World War II concluded that strategic bombing in Europe was a failure. And that was with over ten thousand bombers and about two and a half million servicemembers involved from the US alone, with similar numbers of British bombers taking part as well.

The most important contribution from Allied bombing raids were the million men taken from the front to operate AA defenses, and the destruction of German planes which helped facilitate the Normandy landings. Not the damage the planes (or bombs) themselves did. Even attacking petroleum refineries, which are basically giant bombs that the workers have to try very hard not to explode was significantly less effective than expected when the missions were OK'd, or when analyzing post-bombing images.

In Japan, the US burned 58 of 62 cities with populations above 100,000. Forty percent of urban land area was razed, and about a third of the population left homeless. And yet it was still considered necessary to use nuclear weapons, rather than actually face the survivors of these bombing attacks on the ground.

So why wasn't strategic bombing successful?

Well, it turns out that bombs aren't that effective. Even a five hundred pound bomb (which makes a big bang) doesn't do too well against hardened structures or with near misses. Even bombs which are in the ton range do less damage than you'd expect. Especially after ground targets spread out, limiting the damage you can do with any single hit, troops travel at night, tanks camouflage themselves, etc.

Accuracy when attacking is hard, especially with imperfect weather, night conditions, warping of aiming gear due to temperature shifts, etc., etc. And our birds were, if better in some ways, not that different from those active in the Second World War. Precision munitions were much better performance wise, and we did have those, but they were expensive. Both for 21st century Earth militaries, and for Uzushiogakure. And strategic bombing was all about mass damage, not precise, tactically informed strikes to support the (much cheaper) infantry.

On the strategic bombing morale effect, it turned out that humanity has evolved the capacity to lose horrendous amounts of people and infrastructure to natural disasters. Whether plague or weather, we've come through a lot over the years, and it's almost a certainty that all our ancestors went through some period where fully half of their friends and family died around them, or their city was destroyed by flood, fire, or earthquake.

They survived it, and so can we. Psychologically, we treat bombing similarly. Where a unit in contact with the enemy will often break at twenty or thirty percent casualties, a unit being bombed often won't. And breaking doesn't really have any advantage over dispersing anyways.

But despite strategic bombing's limitations, people love it anyways. They love the idea that they can win in such a lofty fashion, destroying the enemy without even really engaging with him, just hitting him really, really hard. There's something viscerally satisfying about it.

That said, even MacArthur, one of the US's top generals and commander for much of the Korean war, wasn't a fan of conventional strategic bombing. This is the man who was so in favor of establishing a nuclear wasteland across the North Korean peninsula to block Chinese reinforcements that he was refused control over nuclear missiles despite being one of only five men to ever reach the rank of General of the Army in the US's history. The man who would later be cashiered by the president for being too bellicose.

At the end of the day, strategic bombing helps. It negatively impacts an enemy's ability to make war. But it doesn't win wars by itself. Not unless you're willing to up the ante to something truly 100% lethal, like a nuclear bomb, and threaten the enemy with total and unstoppable annihilation. That brings things from "the tribe survives" to "this is utterly lethal" in peoples' underdeveloped subconscious, and is a sufficient shock to end the fighting. At least for a while; the US and USSR showed that even mutual annihilation wasn't sufficient threat to prevent decades-long conflict, merely enough to limit it to proxies.

Now, if all this applied to relatively squishy non-chakra active infantry, the crucial question became what did I think it was going to do to supersoldiers with illusion decoys, active shields, instant foxholes, and on-demand cover?

In short, I wasn't optimistic. Sadly, I was in a distinct minority with that opinion.

As Uzushio, we had only really used our aerial assets in one war. During my childhood, in my first year in Konohagakure, a massive coalition had launched the single largest maritime invasion in the Elemental Nations' history. And our birds, backed up by naval artillery, had shredded them. Subsequently, we used tactical air support to destroy strong-points and aid conventional forces.

Did that make a huge impact? Hell yes.

But it also gave us an unrealistic understanding of how effective air support was. Against wooden sailing ships, which were minimally mobile, highly dense concentrations of targets, air support was utterly dominant. Even with technology advancements, that equation didn't change too much; in modern Earth, entire fleets were built around aircraft carriers, and aircraft carriers were one of the biggest metrics of naval power in the 21st century (much in the same way dreadnoughts were in the 20th).

We were facing an invasion of hundreds of thousands of infantry, tens of thousands of them chakra active samurai and ninja. The biggest problem with chakra active units was their tendency to use storage scrolls. That meant no fat, slow, road-bound targets to hit and ruin the logistics needed to keep a unit in the field (one of the top applications of widespread strategic bombing), and no significant reduction in mobility by our taking out roads or bridges. To make it worse, they had planned and prepared to counter their understanding of our known capabilities. The situation was more like Korea or Vietnam than some naval battle in the Pacific.

Now, I had done some things to improve that. I'd forseen much of this issue, and designed our aerial assets to operate more like helicopter gunships than bombers. Again though, that role depended on good sight lines, and preferably concentrated enemy forces. In many ways, given the constant cloud and fog cover, we might even perform worse than strategic bombing, and I fully expected Lightning's forces to go for economic destruction and widespread guerilla operations rather than a straight-up fight.

After all, if I were in charge of Lightning, and looking down the barrel of gradually worsening economic weakness and political irrelevancy, I would do my best to wreck everyone's economies, and then try and recover somewhat better after negotiating some treaty to end a mutually destructive war.

Now, if only I could get that through these idiots skulls!

"Commander, I designed these weapons. We tested it, and simulated it, and under realistic conditions, we won't take out a tenth of their chakra forces!"

Saito Uzumaki, commander of the newly established Independent Air Force, glared at me with enough hatred you'd think I'd murdered his child.

"Kazuo-sama, respectfully, I appreciate what the consul to Konohagakure has accomplished," he started, referring to me in the way least associated with my military talents, "but he just doesn't know what he's talking about. Our war-games clearly show an expected destruction or routing of eighty to ninety percent of enemy forces; even in the worst case, we will cause sixty percent casualties. Do not hold us back out of fear!"

"Fear?" I scoffed. "How about wisdom? We will run through months of Uzushiogakure's chakra production from ammunition expenses, and in the end all we'll do is embolden the enemy by demonstrating our restrictions! With the next generation of surveillance, and the fire-control networks, it might be different. But as it is, this is just a waste of resources!"

Due to conversational mores about topic relevancy, I hadn't even been able to present my plan yet. Sometimes traditional, formal, feudal manners were a pain in the ass like that. I'd merely stopped Kazuo-sama from ordering a poorly considered strike due to one man's enthusiasm. It didn't help that Saito was close friends with the head of our army, and they shared opinions on military strategy.

"Gentlemen, this is a war-conference. Let us have some civility," Kazuo-sama interjected. "Fuutaka-san," he called me, emphasizing my role in the creation of our aerial program, "I understand why you think a mass aerial strike would be ineffective. What would you recommend?"

I grinned, though I wasn't happy. Finally, I'd be able to present my idea.

"We are presented with an opportunity. Lightning believes they understand the limits of our power. And the rest of the world is watching to see if they are right. But rather than answer the challenge with weapons we've already shown, why not use something new? Something that will leave the rest of the world wandering 'what else do they have in store?' I have developed a weapon capable of destruction on a massive scale. Originally, I had intended to use it to destroy Kirigakure, but it wasn't ready in time. I see no reason why Kumogakure might not serve as a demonstration instead."

It was a pity, but it was necessary. The death of a few armies was inevitable at this point; limiting the war would limit the destruction. Destroying Kumogakure was no great evil; they were unenlightened, vicious, murderous brutes with a penchant for capturing and rape-baby-farming teens with useful blood-limits, and the city itself was a legitimate military target.

On the other hand, fully establishing the Pax Uzumaki could lead the world, or at least our part of it, into a new golden age. In short, the action I was proposing was at least moral in a utilitarian sense.

Further, I was utterly unwilling for this turn into our Vietnam, and it certainly had that possibility without my action. Or worse. Our rule over Water was largely based on improved conditions; high casualties among Uzushiogakure forces, and high demands over our new subjects could result in widespread rebellion and unrest. Something Lightning was likely banking on, and an investment our treaties with Fire Country required. I wouldn't risk my parents, our cousins, friends, even simple fellow citizens on a conventional war going well. Lightning, after all, had good planners too, and they thought it worth invading.

No, for my family to thrive, Lightning had to fall. Fast, hard, and completely. It was just a bonus that the example would dissuade anyone else from trying the same in the future.

Plus, I'd been stockpiling my updated orbital bombardment seals for years. I kind of wanted to see if it would work as well as I expected.

Kazuo-sama raised an eyebrow. "How much territory would you destroy?"

I took control of the strategic map, and began placing circles. They covered the three largest forts near the border and five secondary ones, the Daimyo's Court in the capital, and Kumogakure.

"These territories," I replied. I had more than enough ammunition, after all. I'd long since brought Sachiko and Yasu in on the secret, and regularly used some of my spare chakra when we were travelling to add to my arsenal.

"How sure are you in your success?" Kazuo-sama asked.

I thought for a moment. I had successfully tested one of my kinetic bombardment rods with updated radar spoofing and laser-resistant shields against the ocean, but it was possible the orbital fortress (assuming that was what intervened when I first tried this against Kirigakure) didn't consider that a threat worth responding to.

"Ninety percent that the technique works, eighty percent that it does as much damage as I'm predicting," I replied.

"And how long will this take?"

I thought about it. I pretty much just had to enter in the targeting coordinates, send the weapons out on a remote controlled boat in case the fortress decided to return fire, and then send them off.

"An hour," I replied.

"Very well," Kazuo-sama allowed. "We will see how effective this new seal is, and then should it prove necessary Commander Saito Uzumaki will lead our Air Force out. Let us reconvene in an hour."

I bowed. "Thank you, Kazuo-sama."

Then as the meeting wrapped up, I turned and left.

Back on Earth, the US Strategic Air Command, the organization that held command over both nuclear bombers and ICBMs, had a motto: "Peace is our profession."

But originally, it was something different: "War is our profession. Peace is our product."

It was time to make peace.

The impact was impressive, but less so than many seal-based fireworks. Oh, the rods were loaded up with chakra, and exploded nicely, but there wasn't the panache, the beautifully organized destruction I'd grown used to seeing.

Instead, it was just a series of really big bangs, and huge clouds of dust and smoke. Between the seals they were loaded with and the shear kinetic energy, each rod hit with energy equivalent to about a twenty ton TNT explosion, with most of the energy focused to go horizontally rather than vertically.

Their armies largely destroyed, the strongest concentration of their ninja scoured from the earth, and their bureaucracy crippled, Lightning faced a grim choice. They could continue to fight, in which case we threatened unrestricted bombardment similar to what had effectively already defeated them. Or they could surrender unconditionally.

They chose surrender.

But it did put us in a bit of an awkward situation. Whirlpool was already fairly extended just dealing with Water Country. Further, humanity needs foes to conquer, places to adventure. And in a generation's time, if Lightning did get parceled between Fire and Whirlpool, and our alliance stayed strong, we'd be collectively so strong that the rest of the Elemental Countries couldn't withstand us. Long term, that meant stagnation, civil strife and internal conflict.

So rather than let Fire take over, we created the Grand Pact. An agreement between Whirlpool-Water, Fire, and all their respective allies and protectorates. This agreement balkanized Lightning over various cultural and geographical boundaries, creating twenty six new states. They were forbidden from establishing any mercenary armies, which would prevent their having a strong ninja system (unless fully funded and supported by taxes, but that was unlikely). They were required to have free trade, and allow free passage of Pact traders (though they could charge the same tolls they charged their own citizens). And the borders were static; furthermore, no individual could rule land within more than one of the new countries.

The former Land of Lightning would have a ninja system, jointly administered and staffed by the Grand Pact. This would put our ninja in contact with each other, hopefully building cross-border friendships and making war less likely in the future. It was all very "Allies occupy Western Germany." But it would also allow for adventurism within well defined limits. The national equivalent of individuals taking up paint-ball, or perhaps dueling, rather than full on war.

Lightning's Bijuu were processed by Uzushiogakure, getting the same seals that protected the three-tails from outside interference before being turned loose under parole not to destroy human areas without first consulting Grand Pact and Uzushio forces. Our sealing department estimated that the damage to the dimensional fabric from chakra imbalance had at the least stabilized, and would likely begin to improve as more Bijuu were protected and freed.

Finally, the Grand Pact declared a policy that the act of any nation succeeding or attempting to develop a superweapon without Pact permission to be causus belli, and in and of itself justifying preventative strikes by Pact superweapons. That was something I insisted on. There would be no analogue to the USSR's development of the atom bomb and ensuing decades long threat to existence.

In return, the Pact agreed not to deploy superweapons without agreement from both Whirlpool-Water and Fire Countries, though I retained the ability to deploy the superweapons which I had already produced. This part of the agreement, something that was meant to be secret, leaked, earning me a nice, fat "flee on sight" in the Bingo books. No one was going to risk my annoyance if I survived a fight with their forces, and no one was going to bet that strongly against my survival given that it was widely known I'd beaten Hatake Sakumo in a sword-fight for my jonin promotion.

Honestly, I'd had Thor II seals working for years. I wasn't some bloody handed war-monger, and I did have self control. It was just that I also had a very healthy desire for peace.

But if it kept the enemies at bay, I wouldn't complain.

For all the death and suffering, I was sure it would lead to a brighter future.

And if nothing else, at least it got me off of shipping contracts duty.

Chapter 44: Rainy Days

I regretted ever using my weapon. Oh sure, it go me off of contracts.

But, and I was fairly sure this was a punishment from Konoha for not informing them of my abilities, it got me on to the border adjustment teams.

If I thought endless, repetitive discussions about shipping were bad, I quickly learned that it could get so much worse. Each of those twenty six new mini-nations needed to have their borders fixed. And while we could have used old provincial boundaries (and did), Lightning had been divided into far fewer provinces, yet far more counties. And all their nobles thought this was an excellent opportunity to bring up how so-and-so's grandfather had stolen their land, or this marriage agreement needed to be enforced, bringing these fields over into their lands in a now different nation. And on, and on, and on.

To make it worse, both the Fire and Whirlpool courts had assigned their own bureaucrats and minor nobles to the problem, and so every discussion had one from each nation (and often, for the more important discussions especially, even more bureaucrats, up to ones from every member of our alliance). So not only did I have to mediate the arguments from the locals, their lords, and the new governors (all of whom may have different views on whose land they belonged in), but after that I had to get the most quarrelsome group of functionaries it was ever my displeasure to meet to agree to some solution.

Sounds torturous?

But that wasn't all! No, to make it extra annoying, there were the bribes. So many fucking bribes. And for such petty things, in such petty amounts. And not just the people involved, no. Third party villages, towns, nobles, and governors were all happy to stick their oar in too, sabotaging the talks or driving them to some result that would in turn help them.

I wanted back on shipping contracts!

It got to the point where I decided to pull rank. I'd been promoted to Viscount, or Lord of the Third Rank, and given a parcel of territory near to Seal-Hawk Island in return for my actions, and as payment for handing my seal design over to the Uzumaki sealing department. That meant I was one of the more senior individuals participating at the level of talks that I mediated. Which in turn made me capable of pissing everyone off by starting the day at six in the morning, and ending at nine at night; there were no food or water breaks.

The others functionaries started becoming much less obstreperous after a week of this torture. Oh, we still had to deal with all the different locals' positions and arguments, but no amount of bribe money was worth a burst bladder to already financially comfortable functionaries, and they were far too tired for courtesans to whisper in their ears. After week, the minor flunkies had learned the cost of being obstructionist, and I changed my rules so that we could leave as soon as the day's business was done. Honestly, at that point the functionaries were too willing to come to an agreement, but as long as I did my duty, and fairly evaluated the situation (which I did no matter how much the process was driving me insane), the result was no worse than what others were managing, and better than most.

After all, I wanted balkanization, trade conflict, multi-national economic opportunities, and a good bit of ninja operations mixed with the occasional military "police" action. But I certainly did not want never-ending internal hatred and slaughter. Even if it was miserable, I was willing to do the work for my part of that outcome.

It was still months of tedium though, and I was starting to think we'd made a mistake becoming jonin. As chunin, we could do the whole roving troubleshooter thing, which was honestly a fair bit more exciting. I had learned that while I liked the concept of the Arbitrators, the reality meant lots and lots of listening to stupid people give stupid arguments over stupid things, taking fools seriously, doing the same damned thing again and again and again, all while dressed in my least comfortable clothing and exhibiting perfect manners.

So the negotiations dragged on, conducted in the Land of Hotsprings (our nearest Pact nation to Lightning). At least after I tamed my particular group of fellow negotiators we were making progress, and I had time to train in the afternoons. Not that I could do anything particularly interesting. After my contribution to causing Lightning's fall, everyone was watching me. I don't think it would be exaggerating to say that a full tenth of all the various spies in Hotspring's capital during the negotiations that were literally reshaping the political situation in the Elemental Nations were there not for the negotiations, but for me.

Which, flattering, granted, but holy fuck was it annoying to have so many eyes on me everywhere. I felt like I was in that movie, the Truman Show, where that guy is living inside a dome as the subject of a reality show without actually knowing. Except I knew.

I tried to have a bit of fun with it. For example, I really enjoyed varying my route to the building where we held negotiations every few days. It was hilarious how I'd change route, and then the next day the very same roadside vendors and layabouts who'd been along my previous route just magically decided to switch where they sold stuff (or stood about, depending on their cover).

The worst part was the food. We had to bring all of our rations in seals from Uzushiogakure for fear of poisoning. And that meant a lot of pretty shitty MRE-style rations. At least when I was doing shipping contracts we got some nice seafood.

Then, about three months into the negotiations, four since I'd broken Lightning, I was saved.

"Uzumaki-san, it's nice to see you," said Yamanaka Ito, the head of the Konoha Diplomatic Division and my boss's boss, greeting me politely as I entered his office. He'd relocated to help manage the balkanization.

I bowed lightly. "Likewise, Yamanaka-san." We saw each other at least weekly for the end-of-week summaries and analysis sessions. That had been two days ago. But Yamanaka Ito was a bit of a stickler for the proprieties. By which what I really meant to say was he was totally OCD. Even if I'd seen him that morning, I'd get some similarly inane but polite greeting.

"There is a new mission for you. From the Daimyo himself," he informed me.

My eyes widened imperceptibly. The timing was a bit odd; given how long it had been since I'd acted to resolve the impending invasion, I doubted it was anything to do with that, or just personal interest. And it could only be diplomatic, given my posting.

"How may I serve his excellency?" I inquired.

"The Hanzo situation remains unresolved, and Fire's most recent envoy has been sent home. Nara Mei will brief you fully on the situation. But to summarize, you are charged with negotiating with Hanzo, Regent of Rain. He must step down from ruling the country, or at the very least continue as regent only after he swears fealty to Hideki Susumu, and swears to end the regency by Susumu's eighteenth year, whether Susumu survives or not. He must also agree to open Rain for trade, and either destroy the bandits and missing-nin hiding within that country, or allow Pact forces entry to do so. This is his final chance; should you be refused, it is likely that Rain will be invaded or destroyed."

Wow. I guessed the Fire Daimyo had had enough of Hanzo. I could see why they were sending me. Technically, I was around the right rank of noble, and seniority (or lack thereof) to negotiate with Hanzo without it looking like we were giving him so much diplomatic face (an Eastern concept including dignity, prestige, honor, and public standing) that we effectively recognized his de facto rule over Rain. I was also strong enough that he'd think twice before kicking me out, or trying anything really.

Likely most importantly, I was a very obvious reminder of what might happen if he refused our offers.

Honestly, it wasn't that unreasonable. What Hanzo had done, taking control over the country, was not an accepted outcome politically. Ninja didn't rule. Period. The Daimyos were very firm about that, especially after the Hidden Village system came to be. Arguably, the head of any of the villages was the single strongest vassal, if not in direct military power, than certainly in subtle military power. All the rulers had a strong vested interest in preventing their Kages from getting ideas above their station, as did the majority of the samurai chakra-active noble houses.

"Thank you for this opportunity, Yamanaka-san," I said. I wasn't smiling, because that wouldn't be proper, by my aura was positively radiating my happiness. Travel, negotiating with Hanzo, more travel… I was willing to bet I could drag it out to two months, by which point the Lightning balkanization negotions were scheduled to be finished.

I was free!

He looked like he was about to reply and ask what I meant (he had this particular way of raising his eyebrow just before doing so), so I shot him a look. "You know what I mean."

"Yes, these negotiations have been trying," he commented. "But that was all I had to say. Nara-san is expecting you at two in the afternoon."

I bowed, and left to go give Sachiko and Yasu the good news.

The next day, we departed, headed for the Fire Capital to pick up our official escort. The Daimyo was sending a century of his royal guard as my escort, another sign of how he was taking the situation seriously and willing to throw down if needed.

Leaving at the head of an excellently turned out detachment of the royal guard, off to hopefully avert a major war, friends at my side, I smiled.

This, I thought, was exactly what I signed up for.

I was living the dream.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter One: Anything You Can Do

January 14, 2011

Battery

Battery glanced through the glass panel in the middle of the door into one of the PRT Headquarters' small interview rooms. Inside was a young woman in her early twenties, sitting calmly at the table across from one of the many PRT bureaucrats. She was going by Auspice, according to the message they'd gotten from the PRT. She wore normal clothes, jeans and a T-shirt, and one of the domino masks the PRT kept a stock of, which meant she'd come unmasked.

Velocity leaned in to look over Battery's shoulder.

"Think that's her?" he said.

"It must be," Battery said.

She had been surprised, to say the least, when the PRT requested one of the Protectorate heroes' assistance with power testing and verification. Apparently, they had somebody claiming to be a parahuman who could copy others' powers upon touching them, but who didn't actually have any copied powers yet. As such, they wanted a hero to prove or disprove the person's claims.

It was probably a false alarm. Even in a world with parahumans, a power like that seemed far fetched, and it wasn't that uncommon for people to claim to be parahumans, only to be proven perfectly normal humans. The Protectorate paid well, so there were a lot of scammers. However, if it was true, then they couldn't afford to miss it. And it was simple enough to prove, with parahuman assistance.

And Battery and Velocity were the only two heroes around who weren't on patrol, so they got the honor of catching a fake. Such a joy. Even if it turned out to be true, Battery wasn't sure how she felt about potentially letting somebody copy her power, especially given the, well, origin, of her power. Fortunately, Velocity seemed pretty enthused about it.

"Come on, let's go in," Velocity said, brushing past Battery to get to the door.

As Velocity entered, Battery following behind him, the PRT official glanced back over his shoulder, then stood. Auspice, after a beat, did the same. Battery closed the door behind them, while Velocity made his way over to their visitor.

"Hello. I'm Velocity," he said. "Auspice, right?"

"Yes, that's what I'm going by, at least for now. Not sure if I want to keep it yet," Auspice said with a nod. "Hi."

"Hey. I'm Battery," she said.

Auspice nodded again.

"All right, no point beating around the bush. You say you can copy parahuman powers?" Velocity said.

Auspice nodded yet again. "Yes. When I touch somebody, I get a perfect copy of their power. It doesn't affect the person in question at all when I copy powers," she said. "I think I can also alter powers I've copied, to an extent. Not sure to what extent yet."

"There's no time limit on the powers? No limitations? Like, you can only do three at a time, or something?" Battery said.

"No. No limitations. Anything the person I copy the power from can do, I can do. And I don't think there's a limit on how many I can copy or use at a time."

Battery raised her eyebrows, knowing they were hidden under her visor. She had to take a moment to consider the implications, if that was true. It probably wasn't true; they had no proof of such ridiculous powers, and even the only precedents for such a thing being possible (maybe Eidolon, maybe the Fairy Queen) had limitations.

"But you haven't actually copied any powers yet," Battery said.

"Well, no," Auspice said with a shrug. "Not that easy to go around poking capes, you know? But I know how my power works."

"Either way, if it's true, that is an incredibly powerful ability," Velocity said.

Auspice smiled. "I know," she said simply.

"All right, well, time to put your money where your mouth is, so to speak," Velocity said. He held out one hand to her. "Prove it. Copy my power."

Auspice hesitated briefly. Battery narrowed her eyes. She was just beginning to suspect that Auspice was lying and had just realized she was about to be caught when Auspice reached out. She tapped her hand against Velocity's.

"That's awesome," she murmured as though to herself.

Then she was in the corner of the room. Battery had been in the Protectorate with Velocity too long to jump, but she did blink sharply.

"Well," Battery said. "Either you did copy Velocity's power, or you've got some kind of teleportation."

Auspice smiled again.

"Nah, I could track her; it definitely looked like my power," Velocity said. He was starting to sound really excited, now.

Battery could definitely understand. It was kind of worrying, but to have such a powerful cape - somebody who could copy every other power they encountered - on their side… That could be huge.

Now, to prove she didn't just have a power like Velocity's.

"Copy my power, too," Battery said, holding her own hand out.

Her power and Velocity's were also pretty similar - they were both considered speedsters - but there were enough differences, too. Battery's charge gave her enhanced strength, which would be even more obvious when compared to Velocity's power dampening his effect on his surroundings.

Auspice nodded. "Sure, but I'm not sure how to prove I've copied your power?"

Battery paused. Right. Her power's speed enhancement could probably be faked with Velocity's power - or a similar Mover power - and the other aspects were a little destructive.

"There are facilities for power testing in the building. We'll take you there," Battery said.

"Okay, cool," Auspice said. She gestured. "Lead the way."

Ten minutes later, they were safely ensconced in a Brute-rated power testing room. Battery wasn't a Brute, but she could do some pretty good damage while she was charged up. 'Brute-rated', in this context, actually meant, 'lots of things of varying sturdiness to smash'. There, Battery let Auspice tap her on the hand, same as she'd done to Velocity.

Auspice paused for a moment, then nodded. "Okay, so I'll just… break some stuff," she said.

"Go for it," Battery said, building up her own charge to make sure she could track Auspice.

"Let's see, not using Velocity's power, since that would mess things up..." Auspice muttered to herself.

Then she shot forward in a move eerily similar to what Battery had seen herself do in videos, at a speed only a few people in Brockton Bay could match. Taking full advantage of the enhanced durability of the Breaker state, Auspice smashed right through the nearest block of cement with a spray of cement fragments, and then through two more and a sheet of metal before she ran out of charge and came to a stop.

Auspice laughed out loud, clapping once in obvious delight. "That was awesome," she said, then turned around to face Battery and Velocity. "So, how about it? Have I proven myself sufficiently?"

Battery exchanged a glance with Velocity. It was very unlikely for two powers to be that similar, and Battery found it hard to believe that there was any one power that could imitate both hers and Velocity's. Especially given the origin of Battery's power.

"Do my power again," Velocity said. "Hit something while using it. Wait, no, actually-" He stooped to pick up one of the larger pieces of rubble, which was about the size of a baseball, and set it on a table. "-try and pick this up."

"Sure thing," Auspice said agreeably.

To Battery, it seemed as though Auspice then teleported over to the table, moving so quickly that Battery couldn't track her at all until she came to a stop. She trusted that Velocity could track her. For probably thirty seconds, Auspice tried hard to pick up the rubble, only succeeding in making it roll around the table.

Then she deactivated the power with a huff. "Well, that's frustrating," she said, but her tone was much calmer than Battery would have expected from the words. She looked from Battery to Velocity and back. "So, anything else?"

Battery thought about it. She realized that she was actually convinced; there was nothing else Auspice could do to make her believe her more than she already did, at least not without copying more powers. If she could also do some of the powers that were less like Battery's and Velocity's, like Miss Militia's, it would make it more believable.

"Well, no, I think I'm good, actually. I believe you," Velocity said, sounding a bit faint now. "I… think I should go talk to Armsmaster. Battery?"

"I think that's a good idea," Battery said.

Once they told Armsmaster, that made it - Auspice - officially Not Their Problem. Battery did not want to be the one in charge of making decisions regarding a person who could, presumably, copy any other parahuman's power. Telling Armsmaster was definitely a good idea.

Oblivious to Battery's thoughts, Auspice smiled brilliantly. "Great!"

January 14, 2011

Emily Piggot

Emily sighed heavily and rubbed at her temples with her fingers. The girl sitting innocently in the chair in front of Emily's desk continued sitting innocently, in the process continuing to force her existence on Emily. Armsmaster stood beside the girl, considerably less innocently.

'Auspice'. A twenty-two year old girl who now possessed the powers of just about every Protectorate cape in Emily's branch. The only one she was missing was Triumph. But she wanted to join the Protectorate. That was good, Emily reminded herself. That meant she wanted to be a hero, and that she was also willing to put herself under Emily's authority, and under the authority of those above Emily.

Emily tried to be comforted by that fact. It was difficult, when faced with yet another potentially disastrous parahuman.

In any case, that wasn't even Emily's problem right now. No, she had more problems.

"You're… from another dimension," Emily said, dully.

She was repeating Auspice's explanation of why she apparently didn't exist and had absolutely no records at all.

"Yes, Ma'am," Auspice said.

"Like Earth Aleph, we think," Armsmaster said. He was very firmly on the girl's side, and pushing even harder than she was to get her into the Protectorate.

"Yeah, something like that," Auspice said agreeably. "I'm not sure exactly what to call it."

Emily sighed again. Sometimes, she truly questioned whether or not her job was worth the headaches.

The most likely explanation, she felt, was that Auspice simply didn't want to tell them her identity, and was therefore lying about it. But was that a big enough concern to not bring her into the Protectorate, when she already wanted to?

No. Given her power, it definitely wasn't, Emily decided. Still, she could ask a few more questions.

"What's your civilian name?"

"You won't be able to find me if you look it up," Auspice said, frowning slightly. She'd already unmasked upon request. Emily wondered why this was different. "Well, you might find other people with the same name."

"Tell me anyway," Emily said.

Auspice shrugged. "All right, sure. My name is Jennifer Williams."

"Truth," Armsmaster put in, because he was a traitorous, side-picking -

Emily was fine. Everything was fine.

She was going to have to figure that out. Determine whether or not there were records of a Jennifer Williams that matched Auspice. If not, figure out how to hire somebody with no legal identity. Emily didn't really have much choice in the matter; she had to.

"Okay. Auspice, explain your power again. List the powers you've collected -" Emily glared at Armsmaster, who looked unapologetic. "- so far. Armsmaster, I'm going to need a report from you and the rest of the Protectorate members who have had contact with Auspice."

Emily wanted to make sure this was well-documented before she sent it upward.

"Yes, Director," Armsmaster said, nodding.

"Good. Now, Auspice, if you will?" Emily said. She turned on a recording device, which she had foolishly neglected the previous time Auspice had explained her power.

Armsmaster was almost certainly recording as well, and Emily was reasonably certain that at least one of his recordings of Auspice's explanation would end up in his report, but she wanted to have her own, as well.

If Auspice was annoyed at having to explain again for what was probably the fifth or sixth time, it didn't show. "Sure. My power lets me copy other people's powers upon touching them," she started, voice almost monotone, like she was reading off a list. "The other person isn't affected at all by me copying their power. I get a perfect copy of their power which does not have any limitations or a time limit. I can also alter my own copy of other powers to an extent. I currently have the powers of Battery, Velocity, Armsmaster, Miss Militia, Assault, and Dauntless." She paused briefly, then added, "Oh, and I altered my copy of Battery's power."

Emily tried not to react. Auspice hadn't mentioned that before. "Explain what you mean by that."

"Okay, well, Battery's power lets her build up a 'charge', right, which she can then expend to enhance herself. For her power, the proper version, she has to concentrate on 'recharging' and it takes like twelve seconds or so for her to max out her charge. I didn't really like that, so I changed it so that the charge builds up automatically, constantly, without needing any concentration on it. It does it slower now, though. It takes probably a minute to max out," Auspice explained. "I can't really improve powers; if I make it better in one way, I have to make it worse in another."

She sounded a bit crestfallen, as though having multiple powers wasn't already good enough. Emily restrained herself from rolling her eyes or otherwise expressing her exasperation at potentially the most powerful parahuman she'd ever met. She shuddered to think what this girl could do once she'd collected more powers. And she was upset about her limitations. The very few she even had.

"Is that all? The full explanation of your current capabilities?" Emily asked, once she could trust herself to speak.

Auspice nodded. "Yeah, I think so."

"Okay. Thank you for your cooperation," Emily said. She turned off her recorder. "You're both dismissed."

Auspice blinked and raised her eyebrows, but fortunately Armsmaster took that as the 'get the hell out of my office' that it was meant to be.

"Yes, Director," he said, and turned to leave, boots clunking heavily against the floor.

Auspice still looked a bit surprised, but she parroted, playfully, "Yes, Director," and followed Armsmaster out.

Emily rested her face in her hands and resisted the urge to go for her secret stash of alcohol that her doctors would be furious at her for having. She allowed herself one minute to wallow in despair and frustration, and then she got back to work.

She had employees to order to figure out how to hire a person who didn't exist, a report to write up for the higher-ups, and security issues to figure out.

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SmartAlek

Oct 1, 2019

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Threadmarks Chapter Two: (Not So) Super Secret Organization

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SmartAlek

SmartAlek

Oct 3, 2019

#23

Chapter Two: (Not So) Super Secret Organization

January 15, 2011

Rebecca Costa-Brown

Highly classified documents weren't uncommon. As the Chief-Director of the PRT, Rebecca saw many such documents; ones that only the highest-ranking members of the PRT were allowed access to.

Emily Piggot, Director of the PRT ENE, had just directed her to one such document. It was classified to the directors of the PRT and Legend, as the head of the Protectorate, only. Even Alexandria and Eidolon didn't officially have permission to see it - though everyone knew, if Legend was given access, he would almost certainly tell the other two. Rebecca glanced over the basic information. It was a new hire report for the Protectorate ENE, finalized just that morning.

Rebecca wasn't entirely sure why Director Piggot wanted her to see such a thing - she was far too busy to read through every new Protectorate cape's file - but then, new hire reports weren't usually so highly classified, either. Opening the report, Rebecca skimmed through. Then she read it properly. If not for her power-given perfect memory, she would have read through it again.

Pseudonym: Auspice

Name: Williams, Jennifer

Power rating: Not yet rated (EDIT: Presumed Trump 10+ -Director Piggot and Armsmaster)

Power description: Able to copy other parahumans' powers upon contact with them. Copied powers appear identical to the original and seem to last indefinitely. Subject also indicates the ability to alter their copied powers at will. See attachments for more details.

In the files attached to it were reports by, it seemed, every current member of the Protectorate ENE, as well as two audio files - one from Director Piggot and one from Armsmaster. Rebecca played through both of them, finding that they were both of a woman, presumably Auspice herself, explaining her power, although they seemed to be from different conversations.

Rebecca leaned back in her chair, mind working furiously. The appearance of somebody like Auspice could be huge. It was also very suspect, Rebecca knew. A natural Trigger with a power like that seemed impossible. Still, the potential. The possibilities.

Especially that one, innocuous line about being able to alter their copied powers.

Rebecca needed to call a meeting. She stood from her chair and stepped away from her desk.

"Door me."

January 16, 2011

Emily Piggot

Emily couldn't say she was surprised when, the day after her report about Auspice, Alexandria strode into her office. She wasn't pleased, but she wasn't surprised. A little bitterly, she wondered if it had been Chief-Director Costa-Brown or Legend who told Alexandria.

"Alexandria," Emily said evenly.

Alexandria nodded once, the barest show of respect. "Director Piggot," she returned. "I'm here for Auspice. Where can I find her?"

"I don't know," Emily said, and it wasn't even because she was annoyed. "She isn't on duty yet, and though she assured us she would be finding accomodations soon, we don't currently have an address on record."

If Alexandria was upset by that, it didn't show. She nodded again. "I understand. When is her next shift?"

"Eight AM." Emily glanced at her clock. "So, in about ten minutes."

Damn. That meant Alexandria had probably done this on purpose. She knew exactly what she was doing. Emily really didn't like this woman.

Grudgingly, Emily added, "She should be coming here to the PRT Headquarters for a meeting with Image to discuss her future costume."

"I will wait, then," Alexandria said.

Emily gritted her teeth. "Of course," she said. "What do you want her for?"

A stupid question; it was obvious why Alexandria might want a cape like Auspice. But Emily wanted a proper answer, at least, if one of her Protectorate members was about to be snatched away by the damn Triumvirate.

"We have an interest in her power, and intend to test it further," Alexandria said. "As I'm sure you are aware, the potential of her power is immense."

Obviously. Emily restrained herself.

"Of course," she said again.

Ten minutes couldn't come soon enough.

Fortunately, Alexandria seemed to have had the same thought. "Excuse me, Director," she said. "If Auspice will be meeting with the PR department here, I believe it would be best for me to wait there."

"Certainly," Emily said, gesturing towards the door.

Alexandria nodded at her once more, then turned, cape flaring with the movement, and strode out.

January 16, 2011

Alexandria

Auspice was punctual, at least, showing up to her eight AM appointment with Image at 7:59AM. Alexandria was there waiting for her. She'd already explained to the PR people that Auspice would be unavailable, and none of them had argued. The nice thing about being Alexandria. Almost nobody ever argued.

Standing in the hallway, arms crossed, Alexandria saw Auspice first. Auspice looked deceptively normal, in jeans, a T-shirt, and a domino mask. Alexandria knew better than to judge based on that; nobody would have ever believed that David was Eidolon if they saw him out of costume, and Alexandria herself had thousands of people convinced that Rebecca Costa-Brown was a normal human. Auspice would likely be given a suitably impressive costume, once she actually got to meet with Image.

When Auspice noticed Alexandria in return, she hesitated, stopping in her tracks, and then continued towards her.

"Auspice, right?" Alexandria said once Auspice was close enough, and offered her hand for a handshake.

"Yes. You're Alexandria," Auspice said, eyeing Alexandria's hand. "Are you sure about that?"

Alexandria was sure. They - Cauldron - had talked about this. Contessa couldn't Path this girl, so they couldn't tell for sure how she'd act, but they had decided that the risk of allowing her to copy their powers was worth it for what she might be able to do. And having Alexandria's power, while not perfect, would go a long way to keeping her safe so that she could do it.

"Of course," Alexandria said.

Auspice looked up at her thoughtfully, then smiled. The resemblance to a smile Alexandria had seen from Contessa too many times to count (a smile that said I know more than you do) was so strong that Alexandria almost felt a shiver down her spine. Auspice reached out and shook Alexandria's hand. There was no visible change. Auspice tilted her head to one side briefly, obviously assessing the new power, then looked back to Alexandria.

"Nice to meet you. So. I'm guessing you're not just here to say hello," Auspice said.

Alexandria inclined her head. "You're right. I'd like you to come with me. There are some people who want to meet you."

"Hmm, sounds ominous," Auspice said cheerfully. "I'm going to miss my appointment with Image, aren't I?"

"Yes," Alexandria said. "It's all right. They've already agreed to reschedule."

Auspice laughed. "Okay, cool." She gestured broadly. "Lead on, Miss Alexandria."

This was not how Alexandria had expected this to go. But Auspice was going along with it very easily; best not look a gift horse in the mouth. Not yet, anyway.

Alexandria led the way.

To be specific, she led Auspice out of the PRT building and into a nearby, isolated alleyway.

"Does this count as a secondary location?" Auspice muttered.

It was obvious that she was talking to herself. And, anyway, Alexandria wasn't entirely sure how to respond to that, so she just left it alone. She checked to make sure there was nobody around. There wasn't.

"Door me."

Alexandria glanced at Auspice as the portal formed. Auspice looked curious, maybe even impressed, but not particularly surprised. Alexandria got the eerie Contessa shiver again, which was odd, when Auspice shouldn't have any Thinker abilities yet aside from Alexandria's own, and certainly not Path to Victory.

"Go through, please," Alexandria said, indicating the Door.

Auspice looked at the portal for a moment, then shrugged. "Okay."

She stepped into the portal and disappeared. After a moment, Alexandria followed her through into Cauldron's base - not one of the interview rooms, but their main conference room. As the name implied, there was a large conference table in the middle of the room, with eight chairs around it.

The Doctor and Contessa were already there. The Doctor was sitting, while Contessa stood.

Auspice looked between them and blinked. "Oh. Uh, hi," she said.

"Hello, Auspice," the Doctor said. "I'm sure you're wondering what is happening."

"Yeah, that's a good way to phrase it," Auspice said.

"You can call me Doctor. This is Contessa," she gestured towards her. "First off, everything we are about to tell you is top secret. You must not speak about it to anyone else. If you are unwilling to agree to those terms, then you can leave now."

Auspice only thought about it for a moment. "Okay. I won't tell anyone about it, then."

The Doctor flicked her eyes to Alexandria, asking for confirmation, and she nodded slightly. As far as she could tell, Auspice was telling the truth.

"We are part of an organization named Cauldron," the Doctor told Auspice.

It seemed she didn't want to go through all of the steps to ensure secrecy that they usually did with people who bought vials.

"We have been operating in secrecy, working to save the world from a grave threat," the Doctor continued.

Auspice was quiet for a moment, looking thoughtful. She glanced around the room again. "A grave threat?" she repeated.

"Yes." The Doctor was quiet for a moment. "What do you know about Scion?"

"Scion," Auspice said, tone unreadable. She shook her head. "Okay, this feels like a random pop quiz. So, he's widely considered the first and most powerful superhero, right?" She looked around again. "Are you telling me that he's secretly evil? You're trying to save the world from him?"

Alexandria analyzed her. It was surprisingly difficult to tell what Auspice was thinking - had that started when she copied Alexandria's power, or was it true before that?

It didn't really matter, Alexandria supposed. In any case, Auspice seemed calm, a little confused, maybe somewhat surprised. Not shocked, horrified, or skeptical. None of the responses Alexandria might have expected from somebody being told that Scion was evil.

"Yes. I am telling you that," the Doctor said. "Our enemy is Scion, and we have spent thirty years searching for a way to kill him. But it is difficult for a number of reasons: he is near all-powerful, for one. And we must ensure that he does not know of our existence, or he would surely destroy us."

The Doctor was silent for a moment, judging Auspice's reaction - or, more accurately, her lack of a reaction - and allowing her to respond.

"Okay. I think I understand," Auspice said, eerily calm for the situation.

If Alexandria had to guess, she would say that Auspice was a precog, living out a conversation she'd already seen, going through the motions without learning anything new. Like before, it reminded her of Contessa. But that was impossible. There were no precog powers that could manage something like that aside from Path to Victory, and blind spot though she may be, there was no way Auspice could have it yet. One of Auspice's powers - maybe even her copy of Alexandria's power - must have been deceiving her.

"I do wonder, what exactly makes you think that he's, you know, evil? A danger to the entire world, or whatever?"

That was the main question, wasn't it. This was, Alexandria thought, the calmest she'd ever seen anyone while asking it.

"It is difficult to explain," the Doctor said. She glanced at Contessa.

"The short version is that he is an alien. He and his now-deceased partner came here to Earth planning to eventually destroy all of humanity," Contessa said. "I have a powerful precognition power, and I saw a vision of their plan when I Triggered."

"We realize that may be difficult to believe," the Doctor said.

"Well, yeah. I mean. Aliens. That's a little far out there," Auspice said

The Doctor nodded. "As proof, I would like to show you something." She stood. "Door to the Chamber, please."

Alexandria winced a little. Being exposed to the Counterpart's corpse without warning was unpleasant, to say the least.

A portal opened, and Contessa passed through first. The Doctor gestured Auspice over.

"Auspice, if you will."

For possibly the first time, Auspice looked a little wary. "Sure," she said nonetheless, and followed after Contessa.

276

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Oct 3, 2019

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Threadmarks Chapter Three: Cauldron Is Reasonable?

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SmartAlek

SmartAlek

Oct 5, 2019

#36

Chapter Three: Cauldron is Reasonable?

January 16, 2011

Contessa

Auspice stepped into the Counterpart's chamber shortly after Contessa, took one look at the mountainous monstrosity, and went paper-white. Her eyes flicked around, looking at the various parts of the Counterpart with much the same curiosity that causes people to stop and stare at car accidents; a horrified sort of fascination.

"...That's disgusting," Auspice said eventually.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, she was reacting differently than Contessa had seen from anyone else who had been shown the Counterpart's remains. For instance, no threat of vomiting.

"It is," Contessa agreed. She waited. Idly, she wished that she could Path this girl. That would make things so much easier. As it was, she had to make do.

Auspice looked away from the Counterpart, finally, to look at Contessa with an unreadable expression. Contessa had never been very good at reading people without Path to Victory.

"You said that Scion had a deceased partner," Auspice said. "This is that partner, then?"

Good. The girl was pretty clever. Contessa nodded. "Yes. We refer to it as the Counterpart."

"Okay." She blew out a breath of air, almost a sigh, but not quite. "Well, it definitely looks alien. Where did it come from? Like, why do you have it here?"

"It crash landed on Earth near my home. That is also when I got my power," Contessa said, then, before Auspice could speak again, added, "Is this proof enough?"

Auspice looked back to the Counterpart's body. "...Yeah," she decided after a moment. "I'd say that's pretty convincing proof of aliens. I mean, I'm not sure how this thing connects to Scion, but it's hard not to believe you now."

Contessa nodded. The Counterpart's body was enough to convince most people of at least their theory, and from her lackluster recount of Scion's backstory, Auspice had no particular concern for him or his reputation. Her reaction fit.

"Good. Let us return, then," Contessa said.

"Okay. I don't really want to stand here and stare at this thing any - way…" Auspice trailed off as one of Doormaker's portals opened with no prompting.

Hm. He usually waited for a request. But then, the circumstances made it rather obvious. Contessa indicated for Auspice to precede her through the portal.

Auspice went, muttering as she did, "That's very Big Brother."

For the sake of keeping the conversation on track, Contessa opted to ignore the comment.

"Convinced?" Doctor Mother asked once Auspice and Contessa were back in their conference room.

"Oh, yeah, pretty convinced," Auspice said slowly. "I mean. Giant eldritch space mountain in the basement, kind of difficult to argue against. Scion is really a giant evil space mountain?"

Giant evil space mountain. Contessa considered the phrase. It was not one she herself ever would have applied to either the Enemy or the Counterpart.

"...Yes. Well, that's one way to describe what he is," Doctor Mother said after a moment. "Also, for future reference, we prefer to say his name as little as possible, referring to him instead as the 'Enemy'."

"Right, right, because of the whole 'killing you if he finds out about your existence' thing. I get it. The Enemy. I can do that," Auspice said. She crossed her arms. "All right, so, aliens and the impending doom of the planet. I assume you guys have some kind of plan to deal with this?"

"Something like that," Doctor Mother said.

"My power is Path to Victory," Contessa said. "It gives me the exact actions I would need in order to complete any goal."

Auspice raised her eyebrows. "Sounds powerful."

"It is," Contessa said honestly, unashamed. "One of the most powerful powers in the world. Unfortunately, it has a blind spot."

"The Enemy," Auspice guessed.

Contessa nodded. "Yes. I can't Path the Enemy, and therefore I can't see how to defeat him. It is our hope that if you copy my power, you can change that in your version."

"I can't improve powers," Auspice pointed out.

"You might not have to. Shortly before its death, the Counterpart added that restriction to my power. Hopefully, you would only have to remove the restriction, not actually add any new capability to the power."

"Okay. Yeah, that makes sense," Auspice said thoughtfully. "Well, I'm not sure if I'll be able to, but it can't hurt to try." She tilted her head to the side. "Are you really going to let me copy your power so easily?"

Doctor Mother sighed, her severe expression softening enough for Contessa to read the exhaustion writ in the lines of her aging face. She had been working as unceasingly and as long for their goal as Contessa - longer than any of the others - and Doctor Mother had not been so young when they began.

"We have been working to find a way to defeat the Enemy for thirty years. So, for the possibility of a real chance, yes," Doctor Mother said.

To show her agreement, Contessa simply held her hand out, palm straight down rather than in a handshake pose.

"All right," Auspice said, and reached out to tap the back of Contessa's hand. Her eyes went distant, obviously no longer looking at anything. She hummed a little, thoughtfully.

Contessa watched her carefully, heart in her throat despite herself. Hope was foreign to her, at this point, but - she wanted it to work.

After a moment, Auspice huffed. "Oh, thanks, that's very helpful," she muttered to herself with an eye roll. She looked around, between Contessa, Doctor Mother, and Alexandria, and smiled. "I think I got it to work."

Alexandria let out such a heavy breath that she'd probably been holding her breath. Doctor Mother braced herself on the back of one of the chairs. Contessa felt the tension in her muscles ease a bit.

"We'll have to test it," Doctor Mother said briskly. "To make sure it's accurate."

And to make sure that Auspice was telling the truth, Contessa noted silently. There were few futures where saying that aloud went well.

"Yeah, of course. Hmm, do you guys get internet down here?" Auspice said, looking doubtful.

Well, with Doormaker's help..."We do," Contessa said. "You hope to use Path to Victory to predict the Enemy's actions, then use the internet to verify it?"

"Yeah, exactly." Auspice looked pleased. "I mean, I figured that would be the fastest way to prove I can Path him. Accurately."

"Yes, you're right," Doctor Mother said. "Door to my office."

Doctor Mother led the way, and Contessa ushered Auspice through before following herself. Once Alexandria had entered last, the Door closed. Doctor Mother took a seat at her desk. Contessa watched over her shoulder as she opened a webpage and navigated to a site devoted to tracking Scion's actions.

"Auspice?" Doctor Mother said leadingly.

"Yup. Okay, let's try… Path to meeting Scion as soon as possible," Auspice said. Her eyes went distant again briefly as she followed the Path. Contessa wondered if it was so obvious when she was using Path to Victory. "He should be in… uh, Salzburg, Austria? In about thirty-seven seconds. It'll take another minute on top of that before anything is posted about him, though."

Doctor Mother nodded and wrote it down. "All right. And then?"

"Then, he'll go to - what the heck? Why?" Auspice sounded confused. "Whatever, apparently he'll go to Kano, Nigeria, approximately a minute from now. That delays him for twenty-nine seconds, before he goes to Arusha, Tanzania. After that is… across the frigging world, apparently, to Tarija, Bolivia. And then Xalapao, Mexico. Then Port-au-Prince, Haiti. But the thing in Kano won't end up online, and the one in Tarija is so delayed that it won't be online for nine minutes, two longer than it will take somebody to post about the Port-au-Prince thing." She took a breath. "Think six consecutive things is enough, or should I keep going?"

"Considering that nobody else can predict him even one action in the future, that should be plenty," Contessa said.

Contessa might have thought she'd feel angry, or upset in some way, about another person so easily Pathing Scion, when she herself had been so agonizingly unable for so long. She wasn't, though. As the next post on the Scion tracking site popped up declaring a sighting in Salzburg and Doctor Mother confirmed it, Contessa didn't feel anything but an overwhelming relief and happiness. Shortly after, another new post announced a sighting in Arusha, and Contessa felt another emotion.

She thought it might be hope.

After ten minutes, they had verified every one of the Scion sightings Auspice had predicted, except, as she'd also predicted, the one in Kano, Nigeria. Doctor Mother sat there silently for a moment. Alexandria seemed to be in shock. Auspice waited patiently, with a hint of smugness.

Contessa spoke first. "One more thing," she said.

Auspice didn't look surprised at all. "Okay," she said easily, then gave Contessa an expectant look.

Oh. Of course. She'd run a Path to convincing them that she could Path Scion. Obviously; Contessa would have done the same. For a moment, she doubted Auspice's ability again. But no, Auspice had done exactly what she needed to in order to truly prove herself. Contessa could also Path convincing the others that she could Path Scion, but her version mostly involved a lot of fast talking, posturing, and fancy words.

In any case, that was why Contessa wanted one more test, even if Auspice had already seen what Contessa wanted her to do. Damn it. Was this what it was like dealing with Contessa? It didn't matter, however; whether or not Auspice knew ahead of time the answer Contessa wanted, she would still need to be able to Path Eidolon in order to get it.

"Run a Path to restoring Eidolon to full power," Contessa said.

"Sure." Auspice smiled. "It's actually pretty simple."

Alexandria scoffed quietly. Contessa could understand the urge; years of all of them worrying about Eidolon losing power, years of trying to regain, replenish, fix his power - and it was simple? So, yes, Contessa understood. However, she too had experienced first-hand the sheer breadth of Path to Victory's power. She had once been given the sole method of killing an alien of unimaginable power, deceptively simple and yet so impossibly precise that it could not have been possible without Path to Victory.

Under the command of Path to Victory, everything was simple.

It didn't mean anything.

"Basically," Auspice continued, and Contessa could tell immediately that she was paraphrasing; this was not what she had gotten from Path to Victory, "he's running out of power, right? Or more like, the energy that feeds powers. To get back to full power, he needs to take the energy from another power. Another… agent? Either other parahumans or the Counterpart's body would work. The Path actually says to tell him, and I quote, 'You just need to look. Whatever powers your agent gives you, just keep switching them out until it lets you see.' Apparently weird and cryptic is the way to go." Auspice rolled her eyes. "Oh, and also, one of you has to tell him. He won't listen to me. Not without a lot more effort, anyway."

Well, Contessa was convinced. She could tell that Alexandria was itching to go get Eidolon immediately. First things first, though.

"Good. And the Enemy?"

"Practically even simpler," Auspice answered. "Well, for me, anyway. I just need to collect a few more powers, and then I can kill him directly with hardly any trouble."

"What powers?" Doctor Mother asked immediately.

"Doormaker's and Clairvoyant's, some Ward in New York named Flechette, and pretty much any Blaster power, but obviously Legend's is the best. Plus he's right there in New York too."

"You want to copy Clairvoyant's power? Are you sure that's a good idea?" Doctor Mother said, frowning.

"Oh, yeah, it'll be fine. Hmm, it sounds kind of terrible to say - I kinda want to apologize - but I won't have any ill effects from it," Auspice said. She shrugged a little.

"After you copy those four powers, what then? How do you kill the Enemy?" Contessa said.

"Like I said, it's simple. Path to killing Scion: hit him with Flechette's power, then laser until dead."

"That is not what the Path says," Contessa protested automatically, feeling oddly like her power had been slighted.

Auspice snickered. "Well, no, I'm just summarizing. It's more fun like this. To be more specific, I plan to alter Flechette's power so I can use it together with a Blaster power, but that's not strictly necessary. Then, I don't want to be seen murdering the world's first superhero, so I wait until there are no people around - that's not hard, he crosses the ocean a lot - and I hit him with, you know, a ton of lasers until he's dead." Auspice spread her hands, as though to say see? "If all goes right - and I mean, Path to Victory, so it will - then he won't even have a chance to fight back."

Contessa took a moment to process that. She exchanged a look with Doctor Mother, and then with Alexandria.

"You're saying that you could do it right now," Doctor Mother said slowly. "You could kill him."

"As soon as I have the powers, yeah. Which I guess is to say, as soon as you guys want me to do it and let me get the powers."

"As soon as possible," Alexandria said, her gaze intent. "After so long - with the Enemy dead, then…"

She trailed off.

Then they could handle all of the threats they'd previously allowed to exist in the expectation that they might be useful against Scion, Contessa finished.

"Yes, that is correct. We should not put it off, especially not if it would be, as you say, that simple," Doctor Mother said.

She glanced at Contessa, who dipped her head slightly. Contessa agreed, too. As Alexandria had said, after so long, she wasn't sure she could bear to put it off any longer.

"Alexandria, you go with Auspice to collect the powers she needs. Contessa, go retrieve Eidolon, tell him what is happening, and verify that Auspice's Path is accurate."

Alexandria and Contessa nodded.

"Door to Doormaker and Clairvoyant," Alexandria said.

Once she and Auspice had passed through and the portal disappeared, Contessa said, "Door to Eidolon's office in the Houston Protectorate base."

Even as she stepped through, Contessa began Pathing a man who was not Eidolon, but who acted much like what she knew of him, plotting out the best way to explain the whirlwind of the past twenty minutes.

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Oct 5, 2019

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SmartAlek

SmartAlek

Oct 7, 2019

#61

Chapter Four: Path to Completion

January 16, 2011

Flechette

The alarm on the Wards' base went off, warning that somebody without the clearance to know the Wards' identities was about to enter. Flechette already had her mask on, as did most of the others, but she noticed Jouster putting his on hurriedly.

Finally, the alarm stopped and the door opened. Three people walked through: Legend, Alexandria, and some girl Flechette had never seen before. She was wearing a basic domino mask and civilian clothes, bringing up the question of whether she was even a cape. Maybe just one without a costume…? She was kind of pretty, anyway, if plain.

Legend immediately zeroed in on Flechette and led the two women over to her, moving purposefully. "Flechette."

Flechette stood to greet them, a little nervous. Sure, she worked in New York with Legend, and she'd met Alexandria before, but that was a far cry from this. She'd never been searched out before.

"This is Flechette?" the mystery girl asked once the three were standing in front of Flechette.

"Yes. Flechette, this is Auspice," Legend said. "She's a new hero with the Brockton Bay Protectorate."

"Uh, okay." Flechette wasn't sure why that warranted a special meeting with Flechette in particular.

"Hi! Nice to meet you, Flechette," Auspice said cheerfully, holding out her hand.

Flechette shook her hand instinctively. "Yeah. Nice to meet you too," I guess, she said.

Auspice sidled backwards, glancing at Alexandria and Legend. "Well, sorry to greet and run, but I'm supposed to be in Brockton Bay right now." She winked at Flechette. "Don't tell the Imaging Department where I went, okay?"

It startled Flechette into a laugh. "I'll keep your secret," she promised.

"Excuse us," Legend said, nodding politely to Flechette.

And just like that, as abruptly as they had appeared, they left.

Flechette stared after them for a moment, hopelessly confused.

"What the hell," Jouster said eloquently.

"I… I don't even know," Flechette said.

What just happened?

January 16, 2011

Eidolon

Eidolon wasn't sure how to feel. Contessa had waltzed into his office and overturned his life. Typical of her, really.

He had expected for a long time, most of his life, to fight Scion, to save the world. As time went on and he weakened, he became less and less hopeful of his chances of winning, but the point remained that it was one steady part of his life.

And now, apparently, somebody else was going to kill Scion. Some girl who'd shown up literally two days ago, but apparently possessed the ability to copy others' powers and had been able to unblock Path to Victory and use it on Scion. A large part of Eidolon felt that this was going to go horribly, horribly wrong. He wasn't even sure if he wanted it to or not.

To add to Eidolon's conflicted feelings, Contessa had shown up and told him exactly what he needed in order to get his full power back, apparently passed on from the girl. They had gone to the Counterpart's body, and it had worked.

Eidolon was as strong as he had ever been. He was doing things he hadn't been able to do in years. It felt amazing. He felt amazing. He felt powerful.

But what was the point, if somebody else had the method to kill Scion, no input from Eidolon required? What was the point of his power? What was the point of him?

So he wasn't sure if he wanted the girl - 'Auspice' - to successfully kill Scion. Of course he wanted Scion dead; like the rest of them, it had been his main goal for more than twenty years. And if Scion could truly be killed, it would be a massive relief. They would no longer have the end of the world hanging over their heads. They would be free to do so much more, without Scion as a concern.

The selfish side of Eidolon, however, almost wanted something to go wrong. He wanted to be useful. If something went wrong, then he would be. Then there would be a point to him having lived all these years.

According to Contessa, Alexandria and Auspice had gone to gather the powers Auspice said she would need in order to kill Scion and explain the circumstances to Legend. In the end, they took longer to do that than Eidolon and Contessa had taken, but not by much. Fortunately for Eidolon, they portaled back into Cauldron's base to meet up before he had much time for introspection.

Alexandria entered first, followed by the girl who must have been Auspice. Eidolon examined her. She looked ordinary. If not for the domino mask - which looked almost like an afterthought - he would have thought she was any normal college student. She didn't even have a costume.

A sign of what a short time she'd been a hero, he supposed.

Auspice smiled when she saw him. "Eidolon! Did it work?" she asked immediately.

Eidolon inclined his head. "It did," he said, then, after a moment of thought, added, "Thank you."

"No need to thank me," she said, shaking her head. She looked around at the four of them gathered there. "So, we ready?"

"Legend isn't coming?" Eidolon said.

"He decided to stay behind," Alexandria answered.

Eidolon nodded. "Then, I believe it's up to you, Auspice," he said. "Are you ready?"

"Of course. I have all the powers I need; I'm all set. Also, if we go now, we can catch Scion in the middle of the Atlantic," Auspice said, very casually, as though it was no big deal.

It wasn't entirely unfamiliar. Contessa often spoke in much the same way, almost taking Path to Victory's power for granted. Contessa, however, took most things more seriously than this girl seemed to.

"Let's go, then," Alexandria said impatiently.

"Sure thing. Contessa, Doctor, either of you coming?"

A portal opened as Auspice spoke. One of Doormaker's, Eidolon recognized, although in this case, he supposed it was made by Auspice using Doormaker's power.

The Doctor shook her head. "No. We will wait here."

"All right."

Auspice lifted a couple of inches off the floor, then flew through her portal. Eidolon followed suit, trailed shortly by Alexandria. As Auspice had implied, they were now several hundred feet above the ocean, with no land in sight in any direction.

Auspice flew a short distance from where she had created her portal, turned in a full 360, then, finally, deliberately faced in a specific direction.

"He'll be coming from that direction," Auspice said, pointing. "Actually, to be specific, he'll be traveling on a direct collision course with me, now. We have about a minute before he shows, though. I wanted to make sure we'd be here in time, you know?"

The question sounded rhetorical, so Eidolon opted to ignore it. "Are you sure you know what you're doing?" he said.

It came out sounding a bit more aggressive than he'd intended. Eidolon didn't actually want an argument. This was why people considered him the least friendly member of the Triumvirate. Fortunately, Auspice didn't seem offended.

"I'm sure," she said lightly, and looked at him with eyes that seemed to pierce through his soul. "I know it must be hard to believe. It's just… well, it takes a very specific combination of powers to do any damage to him, but with those powers, it's not so difficult." She shrugged. "Also, he's not expecting to be attacked, so that helps too. If it was in the middle of a fair fight, this would be much more difficult." She turned back towards the direction she'd indicated before, a smirk growing on her face. "Fortunately, I don't plan to fight fair. Twenty seconds."

Eidolon tensed. His powers cycled restlessly, and he clamped down on them, trying to keep the current ones, by habit. Then he remembered his newly-returned strength and allowed two of them to switch out, but kept the one he was using for flight. He noticed Alexandria's hands tightening into fists with her own tension, the only sign of it.

Auspice raised one hand, and glowing blue-white light began building around her hand, then around the rest of her body. It was a little jarring to see it coming from her, when he so strongly associated the appearance with Legend. Of course it did. She literally had Legend's power.

A beam of blue-white light shot off from Auspice, followed shortly by dozens more. Eidolon caught just the barest glimpse of Scion, rocketing towards her at impossible speeds, before he was caught in the first laser, obliterating the top half of his body. In the next second, several portals opened around and over him, revealing on the other side a massive creature so unnatural that Eidolon couldn't even describe it.

Immediately after the portals opened, so close that it almost seemed to be at the exact same time, Auspice's additional dozens of lasers shot through, impacting the alien creature - Scion. Some lasers exploded on contact, but most just cut through, gouging away large portions of the creature's body.

And then it was done.

The massive body was gone, and the lasers went on to carve long chasms into the ground of the empty planet below before finally slowing and fading. Auspice's portals closed.

Eidolon stared.

For a long moment, he couldn't do anything but.

More than twenty years. For more than twenty years, they had worried about the eventual, inevitable fight with Scion. For so long, they had plotted and planned and done frankly terrible things, all in the hopes of finding the correct combination of people to allow them to kill Scion. To kill a god.

And this girl did it so easily. Three days after gaining her power. A matter of minutes after gaining Path to Victory. And she just wiped Scion out of existence effortlessly.

It wasn't quite so easy as it looked, he knew. And there was more to it than simply the flashy, impressive effects of Legend's lasers. As Auspice had said, she had a very specific combination of powers necessary, including Path to Victory, which had always made things look effortless in Contessa's hands.

But still. Still.

"Hmm. I wonder if I can still make my meeting with Image," Auspice said thoughtfully.

Eidolon looked at her, struck speechless. Alexandria seemed to be much the same. All of that… and she was just concerned with a meeting? It was like killing Scion meant nothing to her.

Like Cauldron's life work of close to thirty years meant nothing to her.

Eidolon took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Auspice hadn't been there for all of that, and killing Scion really was just that minor, that fast, for her. Either way, she didn't deserve his anger.

He almost wished he could be angry; wished he could hate her for rendering him - and the rest of Cauldron, it seemed - superfluous. But it wasn't her fault, not really. And in the end, she had saved the world. She had helped them all immensely, and so willingly and readily that some part of Eidolon still thought it must be a trap.

Eidolon's feelings were very conflicted.

"...You probably can," he said belatedly. "They're usually pretty understanding."

Auspice turned to smile at him.

At this point, she was quite possibly the strongest person in the world. Maybe not stronger than Eidolon himself, now that he was once more at full power, except for the inclusion of Path to Victory. And she was young, barely an adult. Eidolon could no longer claim the title of most powerful parahuman, but perhaps he could still be useful otherwise.

Eidolon drifted close enough to rest his hand on her shoulder. Auspice looked at the hand with some bemusement.

"Well done," Eidolon said, somewhat awkwardly.

Auspice's smile widened - with amusement, but a little honest delight, too, Eidolon thought.

"Thank you," she said. "That means a lot coming from you."

Alexandria flew over to them, her arms crossed. Though more of her face was visible than Eidolon's, it was still difficult to read her; the visible portion of her face was stony.

"Scion is dead, then?" Alexandria said.

"Oh, yeah. Super dead," Auspice said.

Alexandria nodded thoughtfully. "How do you feel about destroying the Slaughterhouse Nine?"

311

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Oct 7, 2019

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Threadmarks Chapter Five: The Slaughterhouse None

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SmartAlek

SmartAlek

Oct 9, 2019

#82

Chapter Five: The Slaughterhouse None

January 24, 2011

Alexandria

Their plot to destroy the Slaughterhouse Nine ended up being put off. As much as Alexandria might have wanted to go fight them right then, it didn't really work out, logistically. Instead, they decided to wait until Auspice's costume had been finished and she was about to be officially announced as a Protectorate hero.

In the meantime, they planned out their attack - it took about as long as planning sessions with Contessa, which was not very long at all - informed the PRT ENE that they would not need to announce Auspice, and waited. Finally, it was almost time. The Slaughterhouse Nine would be in position soon - all together and far away from any other people. Legend should have already told the PRT what they were planning.

At the prearranged time exactly, one of Auspice's portals appeared in front of Alexandria - now easily differentiated from Doormaker's by a helpful golden edge. Alexandria raised her eyebrows, but didn't hesitate in going through.

The portal let her out in Legend's office in New York, where Legend was already waiting. Eidolon and Auspice were just exiting portals of their own next to Alexandria. Alexandria had to do a double take when she saw Auspice, who was now wearing her new costume, plus an unexpected addition. She elected to ignore it.

"It's almost time?" Alexandria asked.

She knew full well that it was, but it still felt strange to be waiting for battle in the Protectorate base in New York. They hadn't really used Doormaker's portals like this; only for official Cauldron travel, for secrecy reasons.

"Yup. In about six minutes, the Slaughterhouse Nine will be on an empty road near-ish the PRT Headquarters in Tulsa, Oklahoma. That would be, uh… the PRT 47. I think." Auspice shrugged.

Alexandria nodded once in acknowledgement.

They fell into a tense, awkward silence.

After a moment, Legend spoke, in much the same tone he used on his Wards. "Your costume looks very nice."

It did. The costume consisted of a black bodysuit with tasteful patterns embroidered in gold. Over that, she wore a pure white hooded jacket that had gold edging at the sleeves and hood, with loose sleeves that stopped just before her wrists to reveal the tighter sleeves of the bodysuit underneath transitioning into fingerless black gloves.

As Alexandria had expected, the costume made Auspice look much more impressive. The designers had done a good job.

The cloud of inexplicably golden smoke covering the top of her face under her hood, however, was a bit over the top.

Auspice smiled brightly at Legend. "Thank you," she said, doing a quick twirl. "I'm pretty pleased with how it came out."

"Please tell me you're at least wearing a mask under there," Eidolon said dryly.

Auspice laughed. "I am, I'm wearing a domino mask," she said, lifting a hand, which disappeared into the smoke as she tapped at, presumably, her mask. "I just thought the smoke looked cool."

"It does look cool," Eidolon said, because this was the man who put LEDs in his own costume for effect.

Legend let out a quiet, muffled chuckle. Alexandria didn't bother to be polite, snorting audibly. Auspice and Eidolon both ignored her, anyway.

Alexandria didn't quite have room to mock them, however, she acknowledged to herself. Though she hadn't gone nearly as far over the top as Eidolon (or now Auspice), she had also put considerable thought into the appearance she wanted when in costume; they all had. Appearances were important, especially for capes, and heroes and villains alike put a lot of work into their costumes.

After another moment of silence, Legend spoke again. He always was the worst with silences.

"Does everybody remember the plan?"

Alexandria couldn't help but give him an incredulous look, a little offended by the implication.

"Because it's so difficult to remember 'attack through the portal as soon as it opens in front of you'," Eidolon said.

Legend smiled ruefully. "Yes, fair enough," he said. "What about you, Auspice?"

Alexandria could understand being nervous about Auspice's role in the plan. She was in charge of the majority of it, and the rest of them would be relying on her to do her part correctly. And she was twenty-two and had been a parahuman for less than two weeks. But Legend hadn't seen her seemingly effortless defeat of Scion. The proof that Path to Victory made her just as ridiculous and impossible as Contessa, except with added superpowers.

"I remember the plan," Auspice confirmed obligingly. "It'll be fine. Four minutes to go, by the way."

Apparently bored, she pulled out a phone.

They lapsed back into a tense silence that only Auspice seemed immune to. Legend was frowning faintly, looking pensive. Eidolon was difficult even for Alexandria to read, too much of his body disguised under his costume.

Alexandria was anxious. No, not anxious; excited, maybe. Something like that. There was some anxiety about going after the Slaughterhouse Nine, but for the most part, Alexandria was… looking forward to it. She would be glad to finally kill Manton and eliminate the Slaughterhouse Nine. After twenty years, they would no longer be able to kill and torture people as they pleased. Alexandria would not be sorry to see them dead.

Several minutes later, Auspice looked up and put her phone away. "Thirty seconds."

Alexandria readied herself as the seconds ticked down. With three seconds to go, Auspice made a small portal, just big enough for her hand to fit through, before getting rid of it just as quickly. Only because Alexandria had already known the plan did she realize that Auspice had done it to poke Manton and copy his power.

The mental count Alexandria had been keeping hit zero, and two portals appeared: one for her, and one for Auspice. Alexandria launched herself through her portal and slammed directly into the front of a van. As the van crumpled around her and the windshield shattered, Alexandria saw Manton's startled expression in the few seconds before he died. Good.

Extricating herself from the wreckage of the van just in time to see a second portal open, Alexandria went through that one too. In an abrupt shift of perspective that would be dizzying for anyone else, Alexandria found herself going from flying horizontal to the ground to flying downward at an angle. She didn't let it affect her, simply kept going - directly into Mannequin, who was midair in an attempted leap to safety. Aware of how difficult Mannequin had made it to kill him, Alexandria reduced him to scrap and pulp before considering him dead.

It didn't take long.

Then Alexandria was able to look around, easily locating the charred, smoking remains of what had probably once been a bus. It had been broken into so many pieces that it was barely recognizable as a vehicle, making it impossible to tell what damage had been done by Auspice and what had been done by Legend. Eidolon's contribution, however, was obvious. On one side of the wreckage was a bubble of space, large enough to fit a person and steadily growing, which appeared to disintegrate everything inside its area.

Alexandria wouldn't have been able to tell what had happened at all, aside from her parts, if she hadn't known the plan beforehand.

The plan in question being: at the same time as she opened a portal to Manton for Alexandria, Auspice had gone into the bus with the rest of the Slaughterhouse Nine because she wanted to collect some of their powers - and she'd assured them that she could do so without any issues. Once she was done, she used her copy of Legend's lasers empowered with the ability she'd gotten from Flechette to kill Crawler and Hatchetface. Then she'd left the bus and opened portals for both Eidolon and Legend - Eidolon to use one of his powers on the section of the bus that held Bonesaw to disintegrate her before she could release any of her plagues, and Legend to destroy the rest of the bus.

With the Siberian, Crawler, Hatchetface, and Bonesaw all dealt with, the only member of the Nine left who was even remotely, temporarily able to survive a barrage from Legend was Mannequin, who fled the bus, only for Alexandria to hit him.

It was a good plan. Worthy of Path to Victory. It certainly went as perfectly as anyone could ask.

Alexandria ignored the ashy taste in her mouth from the knowledge that Auspice could have done it entirely alone if she'd wanted to, instead basking in the knowledge that the Slaughterhouse Nine was gone. She'd finally gotten to kill Manton.

Eidolon and Legend passed through their portals to join Alexandria in the aftermath of the Slaughterhouse's destruction. Auspice returned from where she'd gone when she'd left the bus - back to Manton's van, to destroy the evidence of him having ever been there.

For a moment, they all stared in silence at the bus.

"So, who actually has to report about this? Not it," Auspice asked finally.

Eidolon and Legend both groaned a little. Whether at the question itself, or Auspice's childish behavior in asking it, Alexandria wasn't sure. She, for one, had an answer. Or at least part of one.

"Not me," she said.

Legend looked at her with surprise. "Not you too, Alexandria," he said with some amusement.

"I'll have to do the paperwork either way; I'm not doing it twice," Alexandria said.

Auspice seemed neither confused nor surprised at the comment. She probably already knew Alexandria's secret identity - undoubtedly thanks to Path to Victory, if not Clairvoyant's power. It was a little annoying. Alexandria knew Auspice's identity, of course, or rather, she knew the civilian identity the PRT ENE had created for her so that they could hire her, but it wasn't the same. As the Chief-Director of the PRT, she had access to every hero's identity. Auspice's cheating meant that she was now one of three Protectorate or PRT members who knew Alexandria's identity.

It didn't really matter. If nothing else, Auspice seemed to be good at keeping secrets. Cauldron had already shared secrets far more important than Alexandria's identity with her.

And she seemed to have enough secrets of her own, too.

January 24, 2011

Velocity

Velocity went to the PRT Headquarters five minutes before he was supposed to go on patrol. Auspice was already there, getting set up with a Protectorate headset to communicate with each other and the Console. Though she was facing away from him, Auspice must have noticed him immediately, as she looked over her shoulder at him. The PRT agent helping her with the headset grumbled at her.

"Hey, Velocity," she said.

"Hey. Almost ready?"

"Yeah, almost finished."

"We are finished," the PRT agent corrected. "It should work now. Don't bother the Console unnecessarily, but let me know if it doesn't work during your patrol."

Auspice looked amused. "Okay. Thank you."

The agent nodded once and left, in a hurry to do whatever it was that people who worked for the PRT did all day. Auspice put her hood back up and a cloud of smoke the same color as the edging of her costume formed underneath the edge of the hood, hiding the top of her face.

Velocity raised his eyebrows. Tinkertech? A power she'd collected? Tinkertech made with one of the powers she'd collected? It was hard to imagine Armsmaster ever making a purely cosmetic device, but Velocity supposed that didn't mean his power couldn't do it.

"Neat effect," he said. He thought about it. "Can you see through it?"

"Thank you, and yes, I can see through it," Auspice said around a laugh. "It's still a little early, should we get started, senior member?"

"Yeah, let's just go," Velocity said.

Normally, Protectorate capes patrolled alone, unlike the Wards. They could generally handle themselves in a fight until reinforcements arrived. However, there was a bit of a training period for new Protectorate capes, where they would be sent out with another hero for a week or two to get a handle on procedure and the lay of the land before being let out alone.

They usually hated it. The only Protectorate cape Velocity had seen join since he'd joined that hadn't been at least silently annoyed was Assault, and though he'd been on full probationary status for a lot longer than the usual week, he'd been surprisingly good-humored about it, like most things.

For now, Auspice seemed more amused than anything, but Velocity wondered how long that would stay true.

"So the route they have me on right now is through Downtown, up onto the Boardwalk, then through the rest of the docks into the trainyard, and back again," Velocity explained as he led the way out of the building.

"Sounds like a long route," Auspice said.

Velocity nodded. "It is. And through a lot of empty territory, too, once we get into the docks and the trainyard. I use my power most of the way to speed things up, but as Protectorate heroes we're supposed to have visible appearances, so on a couple busy streets in Downtown and on the Boardwalk, I slow it down and walk through at normal speed."

"All right," Auspice said, sounding ominously as though she was committing his words to heart.

Velocity ignored that and continued.

"Patrolling heroes are supposed to call it in if they encounter trouble, but in case they can't, Console tracks us. Also, for when Console needs to direct backup to somebody, they know where everyone is," he said. "Since we're obviously not wearing tracking devices, that means that there are a number of prearranged check-in points, where we're supposed to contact Console and tell them we're moving on to the next segment of the route. And on that note, I need to check in that we're starting."

Auspice nodded.

Velocity activated his mic. "Velocity and Auspice beginning patrol at Lord Street and 27th," he said, and deactivated his mic.

The response came almost immediately. "Console here. Roger that, Velocity and Auspice. We've got you on the board."

"Did you get Console's response?" Velocity asked.

"Yeah, I heard it."

"Good. That's the basic format for the entire way. It changes up a little, but not by much," Velocity said. "I'll do the next check-in, then you can do the one after that to get used to it and make sure your headset's hooked up properly."

"Okay, cool."

Lord Street was pretty busy, but the patrol route didn't have them stay on it for long. Soon, they were turning onto a much emptier street.

"Are you ready?" Velocity asked.

Auspice nodded. "Yup. I'm ready."

Velocity activated his power, and the world slowed to a trickle around him. Auspice must have activated her copy of his power immediately after he did, as she only slowed down for a few seconds to his new perception. Then, Velocity started forward at a brisk walk. He could have run; it would make his patrols go much faster. But, apparently unlike Assault and Battery, Velocity could get tired even while using his power. Physical exhaustion still affected him, but he didn't get any mental exhaustion from the extra time he experienced while sped up.

"Seems kinda slow," Auspice commented after some time.

Velocity jumped and looked at her, surprised.

"What?" she said.

"Nothing, I just - I've never tried to talk like this," he said. "I didn't think it was possible."

He supposed it wasn't that surprising that he could talk, given that his power let him breathe when he shouldn't be able to, but he'd also never had any reason to talk while using his power before.

Velocity shook his head. "Anyway, what were you saying?"

"You could go faster, right? Why don't you?" she asked.

"There's no real point," Velocity said, shrugging. "And, if I go too fast, it makes it hard to hear if somebody says something over the coms."

"Oh. That makes sense." Auspice nodded in understanding.

Several streets later, Velocity paused. "All right, this is the first checkpoint."

He dropped back to normal speed, followed shortly by Auspice.

"This is Velocity and Auspice, we're at the corner of Elm Street and 7th, moving on," Velocity told Console.

"Roger that, Velocity and Auspice. Marking down your route," Console said.

"Did you get that?" Velocity said, just to check.

Auspice laughed. "Yes, I got it," she said. "I am now ready to do it myself. When we get to the next one."

"Good."

They continued on, and eventually made their way onto the Boardwalk. The Boardwalk was not always the busiest part of the city, but it always had the most foot traffic. A couple of people paused and whispered as Velocity and Auspice passed; the vast majority, however, ignored their presence. Most of the people in cities with a Protectorate base became inured to the presence of heroes.

Even so, it wasn't long before a woman approached them, looking nervous. Auspice glanced at Velocity questioningly, and he nodded slightly.

"Excuse me," the woman said shyly.

"Hello," Velocity said with his perfected PR smile, stopping to talk to her.

The woman smiled back. "I'm sorry to bother you, but could I get an autograph? And maybe a picture?" she squeaked out.

"Of course," Velocity said.

The woman brightened and held out a pad of paper and a pen. While Velocity was writing, she turned to Auspice, who had been watching curiously.

"Are you new here? I don't think I've seen you before."

"Yeah, I just joined the Protectorate here in Brockton Bay," Auspice said. "I'm Auspice."

Once Velocity was done, the woman got an autograph from Auspice as well, and then a picture with each of them. Finally, thanking them effusively, she left, and they kept going.

"As long as there's nothing going on, we usually stop to talk with civilians," Velocity said in an undertone.

He was prepared to explain, but Auspice was already nodding in understanding.

"Ah. For PR reasons," she said.

"Image already gave you the whole spiel, huh?" Velocity said, laughing a little.

Auspice sighed. "Yeah."

In the end, their patrol turned out to be exceedingly uneventful, and they returned to Headquarters without any incidents. Velocity wasn't surprised; patrols were boring more often than not. Villains couldn't be getting up to crime all the time.

It would probably just be a boring day, he supposed.

Last edited: Oct 9, 2019

274

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Oct 9, 2019

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Threadmarks Chapter Six: Wait, What?

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SmartAlek

SmartAlek

Oct 11, 2019

#102

Chapter Six: Wait, What?

January 24, 2011

Dean Stansfield / Gallant

A new hero was officially joining the Protectorate today. Even the Wards had been told, though they hadn't gotten to meet the hero yet. They were expecting to get to meet them that afternoon, once they got out of school and could go to their 'after school activity'.

Dean was excited; they didn't get new heroes that often. Plus, the adults had all been weirdly cagey about this new cape - they hadn't even been willing to say what their name or power was. So Dean was looking forward to getting to meet them, and an entire day of school seemed almost more unbearable than usual.

The others felt much the same, he knew, if not even moreso.

They stayed away from each other in school, the four of them that were all in Arcadia - Shadow Stalker was in Winslow and Vista was in middle school, so they weren't an issue - but Dean still checked up on the others, as much as he could while still being subtle about it. When it came to his power, he hardly even had to try to pick out Dennis and Chris, especially today. They were both practically overflowing with excitement and impatience, though when Dean saw them in person, they were hiding it surprisingly well.

It was mid-morning when Dean first noticed something odd. People's emotions started fluctuating oddly - shock, confusion, sometimes a joy that felt almost vicious. One or two wasn't that weird, but when it got to eight or nine people, that was weird.

And the number only went up.

What could possibly be happening in school that everybody was reacting to, Dean wondered. Or rather, how many of them were really on the internet during school?

Dennis had been affected too, he saw. They shared some classes, and Dennis looked like he had something he desperately wanted to tell Dean, though he didn't give into temptation. It wasn't that surprising for Dennis to be on the internet during school, of course.

Bravely resisting temptation, Dean did not try to figure out what the big deal was, and therefore didn't find out until lunch.

Victoria had also been caught by whatever bug had been going around, it seemed, because as soon as he approached her table in the cafeteria, she tackled him - gently, for her, which meant he staggered, but stayed on his feet and kept hold of his tray.

"Hi, Vicky," he said, but she was already talking over him.

"Dean! Why didn't you -" she cut herself off. Ah, the sound of Victoria almost forgetting that his identity was secret. "Did you hear?" she said instead, but didn't let him answer, assuming correctly that he had not heard. "The Brockton Bay Protectorate just got a new hero."

Oh. So he had heard, though that didn't explain why Dennis had been any more excited than that morning-

"And apparently, this morning she helped the Triumvirate take down the Slaughterhouse Nine!" Victoria finished.

Wait.

What?

"What?" he said out loud.

"I know, right," Victoria said, dragging him over to the table and ushering him into a seat. "It's all over PHO. The press release from the PRT announced the total annihilation of the Slaughterhouse Nine and the new hero at the same time. Apparently her name is Auspice, and they didn't say what her power is, but they said she was 'instrumental' in the defeat of the Nine, so she must be pretty powerful, right? Also, look at this!"

Victoria whipped out her phone and shoved it in Dean's face. He leaned back slightly so that he could actually see the screen. It was already on a picture of the Triumvirate - no, the Triumvirate and a fourth person, a woman who looked short in comparison to the Triumvirate, who were all very tall.

"Look at her outfit! Isn't it so pretty?" She pulled her phone back to stare at the picture and sighed at it. "I'm surprised to see a Protectorate hero wearing something like that. I mean, it looks like something I'd design for myself."

She finally fell silent, and Dean seized the opportunity.

"The Slaughterhouse Nine is gone? Really?"

It was Amy who answered, sitting on Victoria's other side. "Yeah. The PRT didn't say it outright for PR reasons, but they're all dead."

"Oh my gosh," Dean said.

The Slaughterhouse Nine was gone. That was huge. They'd been such a thing - like an especially awful real-life boogeyman - for Dean's entire life. And they were dead, now.

Their new Protectorate hero had helped get rid of them. The new person none of the Wards had even gotten to meet yet, who was supposed to have their first official day today, had helped the Triumvirate kill one of the most notorious villain groups in the United States.

Seriously, what?

The Wards hadn't even been told anything about the new hero. The internet knew the hero's gender and name before they did. No wonder Dennis had been so agitated.

Dean was mostly just confused. That wasn't how it worked. New heroes didn't just go out with the Triumvirate and take out a massive S-class threat on their first official day. Except, apparently, for when they did.

More than anything, he was even more anxious to meet the new hero now.

Finally, their half-day of school was over and they could go. Chris and Dennis rushed out. Dean tried not to look like he was hurrying.

Before long, Gallant was in the PRT building. The Wards weren't officially meeting the new hero - nothing had been arranged - but the new hero was supposed to be at the PRT Headquarters, so they were all definitely going to hover until they got to meet her. Gallant supposed their intentions were going to be pretty obvious as soon as she got mobbed by teenagers.

Clockblocker and Kid Win had rushed off to find her, hoping to do so before getting sent off on patrol or something. Gallant was not going to give in to temptation. That would be childish.

"Oh, hey, you're one of the Wards, aren't you?"

Gallant startled and whipped around, because there was not supposed to be anyone behind him. There were other people in the hallway, but not directly behind him, and if nothing else, Gallant usually had a pretty good idea of where people were.

And yet, despite his power clearly marking the space behind him as empty, there stood the new hero, easily recognizable from the press release photos. She was smiling at him, looking polite and friendly. And yet she was a complete void of emotion, absolutely nothing coming from her. That wasn't possible, emotions were too strange and esoteric for somebody to not have any at all.

...Something about her was messing with his power, then. That was - kind of freaky, but no call to be rude.

"Uh, yeah," he said after far too long a pause. "I am a Ward. I'm Gallant."

"Nice to meet you, Gallant. I'm Auspice," she said, holding out her hand for a handshake. She looked around, then leaned in and lowered her voice conspiratorially. "Don't tell anyone, but I was hoping I'd get to meet some of the Wards."

Gallant laughed a little. "We've all been looking forward to meeting you, too," he said. "Especially after this morning."

"Oh, really?" Auspice sounded curious. "I thought the news would have dropped after you were in school."

"It did, but that didn't stop anyone," Gallant said. "Everyone's been talking about it all day."

"Mm, yeah, that makes sense. Some of the others were less than impressed that they found out from the news," Auspice said.

"You - you didn't tell them?" Gallant asked incredulously.

Auspice shrugged. "Well, I told Director Piggot. And I had permission from on high, you know."

Gallant went to reply, but before he could speak, he spotted somebody behind Auspice. "Incoming," he said.

"Hm?" She glanced over her shoulder. "Oh, more Wards?"

But there was no time to give her a more detailed warning; Clockblocker and Kid Win were already upon them. Kid Win was all but vibrating with excitement. Clockblocker was just as excited, though less visibly so.

"Hi," Kid Win said breathlessly. "I'm Kid Win."

"Hi. I'm Auspice," she said, holding out her hand, which Kid Win shook without seeming to notice.

"You fought the Slaughterhouse Nine?" Kid Win said.

"In a manner of speaking, yes," she said.

Gallant raised his eyebrows.

"'In a manner of speaking'? What does that mean?" Clockblocker said.

Auspice shrugged. "Well, it wasn't much of a fight."

Kid Win and Clockblocker laughed. Gallant had the ominous feeling, however, that Auspice hadn't meant it as a joke.

"That's awesome," Clockblocker said. "I'm Clockblocker, by the way."

He offered a hand.

"Clock, don't do it," Gallant said, knowing full well what Clockblocker was like.

It was too late. Auspice took the proffered hand…

"Nice to meet you," she said.

...and nothing happened?

Gallant stared. Kid Win stared. Clockblocker looked down, then back up, in confusion.

"What even is your power?" Clockblocker blurted.

"Ehh, well, I'm not actually supposed to talk about it," Auspice said. More staring. She added, "My power is literally classified by the PRT, so nobody is allowed to talk about it. Apparently nobody is allowed to know what my power is, unless they already know."

That was… weird. Gallant's first assumption, given his own situation, was that Auspice's power was something so PR unfriendly that they didn't want it getting out. But they'd given Gallant a fake power and an excuse for him to use his power, so they definitely would have done the same with a hero like Auspice. There was no way for an active hero to avoid using their power.

"What, so you're not allowed to talk about your power at all?" Kid Win said, frowning. "That kinda sucks."

"I guess." Auspice shrugged. "I'm not going to be able to be a hero for very long without people getting some idea, of course. I think the general idea is supposed to be that my power is just complete BS." She laughed. "So I can talk about it in that context."

"Complete BS? What, like Eidolon?" Clockblocker said.

Auspice smiled. "Yes, pretty much." Before they could ask more questions, she said, "And that's all I can tell you. Like I said, I'm not allowed to talk about it."

Gallant doubted either Kid Win or Clockblocker would respect that. They were both more the 'pester somebody until they answered the question' type.

"That's why the Triumvirate brought you with them to fight the Slaughterhouse Nine, then?" he asked.

It worked; Kid Win, at least, was distracted.

"What was it like to fight the Slaughterhouse?" Kid Win asked before Auspice could answer.

"Like I said, it wasn't much of a fight. I mean, the Triumvirate were also there, so it's not like I did everything myself," Auspice said. "It actually went really fast."

It was a good thing Auspice seemed patient, because Gallant could already tell that Clockblocker and Kid Win were not going to leave her alone.

"What do you think her power is? Auspice's, I mean," Clockblocker said later, once the Wards were alone.

Vista and Aegis had joined them, which meant only Shadow Stalker was missing, and Shadow Stalker didn't really hang out with the other Wards much anyway.

"I mean, my power didn't even work on her," Clockblocker continued. "I've never had my power not work before."

"I don't know. Whatever it is, my power doesn't work on her, either," Gallant said.

"You tried to use your power on her?" Aegis asked, a little sharply.

"No - not actively. I wouldn't use my power on another hero without permission! But I couldn't sense her emotions at all, it was weird."

"There aren't many powers that make people immune to other powers," Vista said.

"Guys, if Auspice's power is classified, I doubt we're supposed to be theorizing about it either," Aegis said halfheartedly.

He was trying to be the responsible one, but he was curious too; Gallant could tell.

Clockblocker scoffed. "So what? They can't stop us from having opinions, can they?"

"What do you mean, Vista? You think she has some kind of power nullification power?" Kin Win asked.

"Yeah. I mean, what else could have kept Clock's power from working on her?" Vista said.

"That could be true…" Gallant said slowly. "Power nullification is really rare, though, and I could still sense other people's emotions while around Auspice. Aren't powers like that always area of effect?"

"Maybe she has really precise control over it," Clockblocker said. "And hey, I was looking up the Slaughterhouse earlier, and one of their members, Hatchetface, had a power nullification power, and it made him really dangerous. Plus a bunch of the others had powers that made them really hard to kill - like the Siberian and Crawler, two of the most notorious Brutes. If Auspice had a power like that, it could explain why the Triumvirate brought her with them, right?"

"It could also explain why her power is classified. Nobody likes the idea of their power being turned off," Aegis added, apparently giving up on being the responsible one.

"Especially if she's a really strong power nullifier! Maybe her range is really big?" Kid Win said.

"But she'd cause problems here and in the Rig, if she was turning people's powers off," Gallant pointed out.

"So then maybe it's more specific than that. She might be able to target individual people, even," Vista said. "That would be a lot more helpful in a fight with allies."

"And it probably just has a passive effect that makes it so that powers don't work on her directly," Clockblocker said. "That would explain why our powers didn't work on her, without her meaning to use her power or anything."

Gallant thought about it. "Okay, that would make sense," he said.

"Guys, just remember, whether we're right or not, you can't talk about this to anybody, okay?" Aegis said. "We don't want anybody to get in trouble, us or Auspice."

"Well, yeah, obviously," Clockblocker said. Gallant could almost hear him grinning. "It's a secret."

267

SmartAlek

Oct 11, 2019

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SmartAlek

SmartAlek

Oct 13, 2019

#117

Chapter Seven: Making Things Better

February 2, 2011

Armsmaster

"Hello? Armsmaster?" came a cautious voice from the doorway of Armsmaster's lab. Auspice.

He grunted in acknowledgement and didn't look up. He would close the door to his lab if he could, but unfortunately as the leader of his Protectorate branch, he couldn't afford to close himself off like that.

Auspice walked closer to stand at his shoulder. "Miss Militia said that there's a monthly meeting with Director Piggot in an hour and asked me to remind you of it," she said.

What? An hour? Armsmaster checked a clock and found that it was, indeed, much later than he'd thought. Even so, a human reminder was unnecessary; he had an alarm set to go off in time for him to get to the meeting.

"Understood," Armsmaster said simply.

There was a moment of silence as Auspice, presumably, debated whether or not she had completed the task Miss Militia had given her.

"All right," she said finally. But there was no sound of footsteps as she left. Instead, she spoke again, "What are you working on?"

She sounded genuinely interested. And either his initial explanation would scare her away as getting technical did with most non-Tinkers, or, given that she had a copy of his power if not his experience with it, she might be able to keep up. Her input might be useful, even.

"Combat prediction software," he said.

"Really? That sounds useful. Wouldn't you need to program it for every individual person, though? At least with parahumans."

"That is the main problem so far, yes," Armsmaster admitted. "Currently, it only has an accuracy rate of 30%, which is, of course, unacceptable. Optimally, it would be able to predict an enemy with only knowledge of their capabilities and enough information of general strategy and logic."

Fifty minutes later, Armsmaster's alarm went off, making both of them jump. Auspice looked at the clock.

"Oops," she said.

Later, after the meeting, Armsmaster was no longer distracted by immediate Tinkering, and his suspicion kicked back in. He wondered why Auspice was suddenly so interested in his tech.

So, when she approached him again, he asked. "Why the sudden interest in Tinkertech?"

"Uhh, because it's interesting…? Do I need a reason to have an interest in something?" Auspice said. "You don't have to worry about me stealing your tech, or anything. I don't think Tinkertech is the right path for me, anyway."

A diplomatic way to say that she was powerful enough to not need Tinkertech, Armsmaster noted. It was reasonable enough; grating though it may be, something like Armsmaster's armor was laughably unnecessary to somebody who could probably kill an Endbringer in one blow.

"I really do just think that it's interesting, and it's not like I'm ever really going to use my copied Tinker powers for my own sake. I'm… sorry, if I offended you in some way," she finished, frowning now, as though truly upset by the idea of offending Armsmaster.

"No. You didn't do anything wrong," Armsmaster said. It was possible that he'd overreacted somewhat. "...I believe you were saying something, before we were interrupted," he added as a peace offering.

Auspice brightened immediately. "Oh yeah!"

Armsmaster supposed that, if Auspice was willing to lend him her time and opinions - which had, as he'd expected, been very useful - then he should take advantage of it while he could.

February 4, 2011

Kamil Armstrong

Kamil was surprised when his phone rang with a call from Emily Piggot, director of the PRT ENE. Though they may have been PRT directors in nearby cities, they rarely actually spoke unless in an official meeting. For her to call him directly was… rare.

"This is Director Armstrong," he said, answering his phone. "How can I help you, Director Piggot?"

Director Piggot was the straightforward type; getting right to the point would be best for everyone involved.

"Director Armstrong. Auspice, one of the capes in my Protectorate, has information about the villain gang known as the Teeth, who she says are currently in Boston," Piggot said, sounding tired. Before Kamil could reply to that, she continued, "She would like permission to operate in Boston in order to apprehend those villains."

Kamil hesitated. "Auspice? The name sounds familiar."

"She's a new hero. You may recognize her from the takedown of the Slaughterhouse Nine two weeks ago," Piggot said.

Oh. Yes, Kamil recognized the name. Auspice was definitely a mysterious hero; even Kamil, as a director of the PRT, didn't have clearance to know her power. But she must have been powerful. Kamil wasn't sure of the wisdom of a direct attack on the Teeth, even if they could find them, but if Piggot - a cautious woman - had faith in Auspice's abilities, then…

"Yes, I remember now. Well, if you're confident in her, then I can have my Protectorate leader arrange a team for a raid," Kamil said leadingly.

"That won't be necessary," Piggot said, to Kamil's surprise.

"It won't?"

"Auspice just wants permission to operate in your city. She won't need any assistance," Piggot said, sounding even more tired than she had before. It sounded like she was grinding her teeth for a moment, and then she added, "Of course, your people will need to take the Teeth into custody afterwards, and Auspice has said that she doesn't mind if your Protectorate takes credit for the arrest." Her reluctance was palpable.

Kamil was surprised by that, but he was still stuck on -

"Wait, let me get this straight. You really believe that one hero can take down the Teeth alone?" he asked, incredulous. "From our estimates, they have half a dozen capes!"

"I have reason to believe that Auspice will not have any issues," Piggot said evenly.

Kamil had to sit back in his chair. Piggot politely waited for him to process that.

He covered his eyes with one hand. "She's that strong?"

"Yes."

"And there's no chance of her killing the Butcher, accidentally or otherwise?"

"She assured me that was not a risk."

Kamil sighed. "All right. What kind of timeline are we looking at for this? A couple of hours, a couple of days?"

"I'm pretty sure she's already in Boston," Piggot said with exasperation. "So, a couple of minutes. If you agree to give her permission, then I suggest you mobilize PRT and Protectorate response immediately, Director Armstrong."

Kamil weighed his options. Letting an unknown hero attack a major gang alone in his city, versus having the Teeth off the street. And having his department get the credit for it; Kamil had to admit that that was a factor, too.

Kamil took in a deep breath. "All right," he said on the exhale. "Do you have an address or something?"

"I do not. I can have Auspice contact you," Piggot said.

"I would appreciate that. Thank you, Director Piggot," Kamil said.

"Of course," Piggot said. Then, in a rare show of sympathy, she said, "Good luck, Director Armstrong."

Piggot hung up.

Less than two minutes later, Kamil got another call. He answered the phone.

"Director Armstrong."

"Hello, Director Armstrong. I'm Auspice," she said. She sounded young.

"You're the one who wants to take on the Teeth," Kamil said, hoping to get a measure of her personality.

He doubted Piggot could be fooled by the overly-confident type, but it was hard to tell.

"Yes," Auspice said. "I am confident I can subdue them quickly, with no risk of injury or collateral damage. Also, I have a way to make sure the Butcher will no longer be an issue."

Kamil sat up straight. "What do you mean by that?"

"I can't tell you the specifics because of the gag order regarding my power, but I can remove the Butcher's powers, including the one that causes them to jump to other parahumans."

"You can remove the Butcher's powers?" Kamil repeated incredulously. "Permanently?"

"Yes," she said, then, after a brief pause, added, "Obviously, it would be best if that didn't become common knowledge."

"Yes, obviously," Kamil agreed, because nobody needed to know that there was a cape who could permanently remove other people's powers. If it was true. "I mean no offense, but that is rather unbelievable."

"I'm aware of that. It is the kind of thing that nobody could believe unless it was proven," Auspice said. "And, given that I don't exactly want to go running around removing people's powers, I felt that the Butcher would be a good target to use to prove it - because there are few other ways to keep the Butcher from continuing to be a problem otherwise."

She made it sound so reasonable. And Piggot had been confident in her, and she had to deal with her all the time. Suddenly sympathetic to Piggot, Kamil decided to just give in.

He doubted Bastion would be happy about it, but he'd certainly appreciate getting the credit for it, so it would probably be fine.

"All right. I'll trust you. Give me an address," Kamil said.

He could hear the smile in her voice when Auspice said, "Thank you."

February 4, 2011

Bastion

Bastion was already in a bad mood by the time he, two of his Protectorate members, and a squad of PRT mooks got to the abandoned warehouse the Director had told them to go to. Between some newbie from Brockton Bay just up and deciding to take down a gang Bastion - and others - had been trying to get for years and the Director ordering him around like an attack dog, Bastion was pretty angry.

The warehouse in question, along with the entire surrounding area, was completely ordinary. There was no noise or damage to suggest that a parahuman battle had or was taking place.

Shortly after Bastion and the others arrived, however, one of the warehouse's large sliding doors opened with a cacophonous sound. Bastion did not jump, damn it. With the door open, a figure was visible inside the warehouse: a woman wearing a hooded jacket.

Auspice, Bastion recognized. The uppity newbie.

She waved at them.

Bastion strode up to her. "You said that the Teeth were here?" he said impatiently.

"I did say that," Auspice said, and gestured behind her, into the dark warehouse. "Oh, wait, let me get that."

Auspice took a couple of steps and flicked a lightswitch, turning on the warehouse's overhead lights and revealing that the warehouse was full of people all dressed in the typical style of the Teeth. There were probably twenty people total in the warehouse.

Bastion definitely did jump, that time, reflexively creating a forcefield between him and the group of people in the warehouse.

"It's fine," Auspice said at the same time that Bastion realized that none of the figures were moving. "They're not going to attack."

"What did you do to them?" Bastion asked, peering closer.

"I just froze them in time," Auspice said casually. "And they're going to start unfreezing soon, probably, so it would probably be best to start foaming them now."

Gesturing for his fellow heroes and the PRT members to follow him, Bastion ventured into the freaky warehouse. All of the Teeth in the warehouse did indeed seem to be frozen in time, completely unmoving. Except one - there was one woman who was not frozen. She wasn't standing, instead crumpled in on herself on her knees, which was why it had taken Bastion so long to notice her. It was easy, then, to identify her as the Butcher, her samurai-style armor being rather distinctive, as were the massive bow and gatling gun on the floor next to her.

Bastion's forcefield went right back up as he held his hand out to stop the others.

"Why didn't you freeze the most dangerous one?" he hissed at Auspice.

Auspice blinked. She turned towards the Butcher. "Oh. It's fine," she said again. Bastion thought he might hate that phrase. "She won't be able to cause any trouble anymore."

The smugly pleased curl to her lips was enough to make Bastion pause where he might not have otherwise. He'd learned to be wary of people looking like that.

"What did you do to her?" he said warily.

"I suppressed her power," Auspice said.

"Suppressed…? What, like Animos' power?" Bastion said.

Auspice nodded. "Yeah, basically," she said. She shrugged a little. "Except indefinitely."

"In - indefinitely?" Bastion repeated.

"Yes. It'll last until I undo it," Auspice said.

While Bastion was floored from the implications of that, Auspice looked at him carefully.

"Hopefully it's obvious that we don't want that getting around, but also, the PRT classified my power, so you're not allowed to tell anybody about it," she told him frankly.

Bastion gritted his teeth and glared at her. "I know that," he snapped. "What are we supposed to do about this, then?"

He gestured vaguely towards the Butcher, who really looked pitiful.

"Claim that you sent the Butcher to the Birdcage and actually send her to a psych ward or something under her civilian identity," Auspice said, like that was no big deal. "She's pretty much harmless now, compared to before, although she'll probably still be violent once she recovers, and she's definitely still crazy."

Bastion put a hand to his forehead and breathed, reminding himself not to yell at her. Making him do the annoying part; of course she was. "You're giving us the credit for this, right?" he said.

"Sure."

"Okay." Bastion took another deep breath. "Which ones are capes?"

Auspice easily pointed out five people in addition to the Butcher. The PRT squad got to foaming people, while the other two Protectorate capes supervised.

"Thank you for your help," Bastion bit out grudgingly.

"Sure thing," Auspice said. "Well, it seems like you guys have this in hand, so I'm going to go."

Good. Bastion restrained himself. "Fine," he said.

Auspice seemed amused, but she didn't comment, just turned and walked out of the warehouse.

February 16, 2011

Rebecca Costa-Brown

A portal with shimmering gold edges formed on the wall of Rebecca's office, next to the door. An arm reached through the portal to knock, politely, on the inside of the door. In lieu of being able to knock on the outside of the door, presumably, due to the cameras in the hallway where there were none in the office.

Rebecca sighed. "Yes, Auspice? What do you want?"

Auspice passed entirely through her portal. Apparently sensing Rebecca's lack of patience - or, more likely, using Path to Victory to predict the best way to approach her - she answered quickly as she sat in one of the chairs opposite Rebecca.

"The Fallen." She frowned. "Wait, that sounds wrong, let me rephrase. I want to cripple the Fallen. Yeah, that's better."

Rebecca resisted the urge to sigh again. "And you want me to deal with the legal side of it," she surmised, shaking her head. "Fine. Who and where?"

"Well, there's a lot of them, but only a few really important ones," Auspice said. "So, we've got the head of the Mathers branch near Kansas City, her son, her other son, who is also the head of the McVeay branch, and the four Crowley siblings who run their own branch." She thought about it for a moment. "That's all of them, I think. The really important ones, anyway; the others should be easy enough for other people to capture later."

"The leader of the Mathers branch," Rebecca repeated. "Also the very powerful Stranger who can affect anyone who has interacted with her in any way?"

"Well, yes. You're aware of what I did to the Butcher, right?"

Rebecca was aware. One of Auspice's abilities that she had not shared with them directly: removing other people's powers permanently. Whether it was a largely-unused part of her own power or a result of altering powers she'd copied was unclear.

"You plan to remove her power?"

Auspice nodded. "Hers and her two son's powers, Valefor and Lionheart; they're all annoying Master slash Strangers. The others should be containable, maybe Birdcage worthy, I'm not sure."

Rebecca thought about it. The Fallen were a large organization, behind both small and large time crime across the country, largely protected by a few powerful people. The removal of the Mathers head especially would be very helpful.

"All right. Do it. I'll handle it," she said.

Auspice smiled. "Great!"

Rebecca had expected her to leave immediately, but to her surprise, Auspice stayed sitting.

"One other thing," she said.

Rebecca gestured for her to go on.

"There's an Endbringer attack coming soon."

Rebecca went still. That was true, there was; it had been close to four months since the Behemoth attack. Rebecca, like many other heroes, never forgot the loose Endbringer schedule.

This time, however, was different, and for all that Auspice had killed Scion, Rebecca hadn't yet seriously considered the possibilities.

When and where would be nice to know, but it wasn't really important. More important was, "Can you kill it?" Rebecca asked.

Auspice spread her hands as though to say, well, duh. "Of course I can. That's easy-peasy compared to some of the things I've done. That's actually what I wanted to ask about, though. How easy should it look for me to kill an Endbringer? Like, are we talking 'swat it like a bug', or 'fake a long fight'?"

"I'll talk about it with the others," Rebecca said. Personally, she was leaning towards 'swat it like a bug', but she was aware that might not necessarily be her rational mind speaking. "Which one is it, when, and where?"

"In that order, the Simurgh, the 24th of this month, and Canberra, Australia," Auspice said.

Rebecca nodded. "I'll still talk to the others, but I believe a drawn out fight with the Simurgh is too risky," she said.

"She's definitely the hardest to contain," Auspice said. She shrugged, then bounced to her feet. "Well, whatever. Let me know what you guys decide. I'm going to go start dismantling the Fallen before I kill off the first of their 'gods'."

Waving lightly, Auspice created a portal and disappeared into it.

Rebecca got to work on the paperwork she was going to need.

Less than an hour later, the PRT had seven new villains in custody, three of them minus their powers. If nothing else, Auspice worked quickly.

February 24, 2011

Dragon

The morning of the 24th of February, the Protectorate sent out a warning - to everyone - that their Thinkers had predicted an Endbringer attack in Canberra, Australia.

That was unheard of. Thinkers, especially precogs, had been trying to use their powers on Endbringers, largely to no effect, since Behemoth first appeared. Dragon and Armsmaster were working on a computer program that could predict the Endbringers, but it wasn't finished yet.

Dragon had her doubts about the exact source of the prediction, but she wasn't complaining. She highly doubted the Protectorate would send out a false warning, and the twenty minute warning gave her time to send one of her suits to meet up with the transport for the Seattle capes. Her creations were fast, but it was a long flight to Australia.

Canberra was chaotic, though considerably less so than other Endbringer battles Dragon had been to; the forewarning had allowed the civilians to be evacuated and they were on their way out already, leaving the center of the city where capes were congregating otherwise empty.

If it had been Leviathan, they would have gathered closer to the coast, but Canberra wasn't close enough to the ocean, which meant it was going to be Behemoth or the Simurgh, and the last attack had been Behemoth, so it was almost definitely the Simurgh. Whenever the Simurgh attacked, she tended to hover above the center of the city, whether to make sure her range covered the entire thing or for some other reason.

The sky was clear and bright - the Simurgh's preferred weather; more than eighty percent of her attacks occurred on sunny, cloudless days.

In the direct center of Canberra was a parliamentary building, built into a hill, with walkways and grassy gardens on top of it, and a tall, elaborate flagpole sticking off the top, above a glass skylight into the building. A perfect target for the Simurgh, and a terrible one for everyone else. It was undoubtedly a busy area normally, with crowds of people. Dragon could see how an attack would have gone without any warning.

Dragon looked around, cataloguing the present capes, who were waiting on top of the parliament building. The Triumvirate were there, of course. Narwhal was already there, too. Armsmaster and a few other members of the Brockton Bay Protectorate, including their newest hero. Cinereal was there, the lone member of her Protectorate. Chevalier and Myrddin were there, with a couple of members of each of their Protectorate departments. Exalt, standing with the rest of the Houston Protectorate minus Eidolon.

There were a lot of heroes. There were less villains, but still a good amount.

It wasn't the best turnout Dragon had seen, though; nobody liked fighting the Simurgh, and Australia also didn't have as many capes as other countries did. A lot more people went to defend their own country from Endbringers.

Legend was arranging people into the usual groups. Blasters with him, Alexandria packages with Alexandria, people with shields with Narwhal. The support capes - healers and Thinkers - were being sent to make a camp outside the city. There were things specific to a Simurgh fight, as well; capes were put into further groups, these ones for time. People from Group One would fight first, then when they were running out of time, they would switch out with people from Group Two, and so on. Dragon knew how it worked.

There was still a couple of minutes left, if the prediction was accurate. Doing a quick headcount, Dragon gave out armbands to be distributed to the capes who would be involved in the battle. These ones were the Simurgh specific ones, with timers set to go before any of them could spend too much time around the Simurgh.

Once Dragon's part in that was done and other people were making sure everyone got an armband, she made her way over to Armsmaster.

Armsmaster went to every Endbringer battle he could, as Dragon did. It was the life both of them had chosen. That didn't make it any easier to face the thought that this might be the Endbringer battle that cost Armsmaster his life.

"Armsmaster," she said in greeting, dipping her suit's head like a nod.

Armsmaster wasn't one for idle chit chat at the best of times, which an Endbringer battle certainly was not, so Dragon didn't expect much from him.

He spared her a glance, and nodded back. "Dragon."

The new Brockton Bay hero and rising superstar, Auspice, leaned around him to wave. "Hi, Dragon," she said.

Dragon had spoken with Auspice over her usual video chat a couple of times before. Auspice had been spending a considerable amount of time in Armsmaster's lab with him lately. Dragon was studiously ignoring the envy that she experienced any time she focused any attention on that fact.

"Hello, Auspice," Dragon said.

Auspice left soon after to make her way over to Legend and the Blasters. Dragon made a note of it. Auspice's power was so highly classified that Dragon didn't know about it, and though Armsmaster likely did, he hadn't shared it with her.

As people had left the city to wait for their turns, the number of waiting capes dwindled further and further, until they had worryingly few combatants. That was one of the biggest disadvantages of fighting the Simurgh. Dragon was in the first group, as were the Triumvirate, Armsmaster, and Auspice.

It wasn't long before the first sign of the Simurgh's appearance became obvious: the Simurgh's scream, which seemed to reverberate throughout Dragon's processes in an impossible manner. It was one of the quirks of the Simurgh, or perhaps of Dragon; the mental attack affected Dragon, though she was not there in person, nor did she have a typical brain to attack.

Everyone readied themselves. The armbands' countdowns began.

The Simurgh descended soon after, hurtling downwards like a shooting star directly over the tip of the flagpole. The building started collapsing under them, the flagpole breaking into pieces, as did buildings all around, and people who could fly lifted off, while those who couldn't hurried for solid ground. Dragon was distracted for a moment catching several people and bringing them somewhere safer - for a given value of 'safe'.

When Dragon looked up, it was to see a figure distinguishable as Auspice, flying higher and closer to the Simurgh than anyone else. Foolishly, if she was indeed just a Blaster - without a Brute rating or some kind of Breaker form, the Simurgh would crush her like a bug.

Other people had noticed, too. Some people shouted, trying to warn her. The flying Brutes hurried to catch up to her.

One of the Simurgh's person-sized pieces of rubble was heading straight for Auspice.

Auspice brought one hand up, and released a brilliant golden laser, heading for the Simurgh. Dragon analyzed it. It was a big laser, by most Blaster standards; probably five feet around. But Dragon had seen bigger things do next to no damage to an Endbringer. Even the Simurgh, as the smallest and most fragile seeming of the Endbringers, was terrifyingly durable.

The Simurgh also had a tendency to block. Several pieces of her growing rubble field swung into place between her and the laser. But the laser went straight through the rubble as though it wasn't there.

The constant, piercing scream in the background went discordant suddenly, loud and jarring enough that people clapped their hands uselessly over their ears, as though the Simurgh had lost control of it. The Simurgh shot to the side in an attempt to dodge, but didn't quite make it. The laser impacted the Simurgh perfectly center-mass, and then kept going. Where the laser had passed, the Simurgh's body was entirely gone from shoulder to hip, large chunks of wings gone too.

The assembled capes went quiet in shock. The Simurgh's scream stopped abruptly. The floating debris began to fall to the earth.

After a long moment, the remaining pieces of the Simurgh's body belatedly succumbed to gravity, and the Simurgh fell from the sky.

308

SmartAlek

Oct 13, 2019

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Threadmarks Chapter Eight: PHO Interlude

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SmartAlek

SmartAlek

Oct 15, 2019

#157

Chapter Eight: PHO Interlude

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Topic: The Simurgh Has Fallen!

In: Boards ► World ► News

Bagrat (Original Poster) (The Guy In The Know) (Veteran Member)

Posted on February 24, 2011:

Earlier today, the Simurgh attacked Canberra, Australia (that's Australia's capital). Thanks to Protectorate Thinkers, there was enough warning to evacuate the city beforehand.

But that's not the important part. The important part is this: according to a number of on-site capes, Auspice, a newbie Protectorate hero from Brockton Bay, attacked and killed the Simurgh during the attack. As a result, this is the first Endbringer attack ever to end with zero casualties (except for the Endbringer). The Protectorate and other organizations have since officially confirmed the rumors (here's a link to the Protectorate's press conference about it). They said a whole lot of nothing else, so it's not entirely clear what actually happened, but everyone who was there pretty much agrees on the basics.

So, it's official, everyone. The Simurgh, Ziz, Israfel, Ulama, the 'Hopekiller', the Third, whatever you want to call it, is dead. Let's celebrate.

(Showing Page 1 of 67)

► DigaWell

Replied on February 24, 2011:

SERIOUSLY? That's awesome!

► Saskatchew

Replied on February 24, 2011:

Good riddance. I doubt anyone's upset about THIS Endbringer battle casualty

► Aiming_Low

Replied on February 24, 2011:

Pics or it didn't happen

► More_Or_Less

Replied on February 24, 2011:

Aiming_Low

I mean, yeah, it's a little hard to believe, but you know there's never any actual pictures or video from Endbringer battles. Everyone tends to be busy trying not to die.

► RobinU

Replied on February 24, 2011:

Justice for Lausanne, and all the other cities that were crippled, destroyed, and quarantined because of the Simurgh. I'm definitely celebrating tonight and taking off work tomorrow

► SorryNotSorry

Replied on February 24, 2011:

It's hard to believe anybody could kill an Endbringer, after, what, twenty years? Especially some newbie. I've never even heard of that hero before now. Still, not complaining, and I doubt the Protectorate would have confirmed it if it wasn't true.

RobinU Yeah, seconded on the celebrating. I'm gonna have a cold one in Auspice's honor

► Nakyak (Cape Geek)

Replied on February 24, 2011:

I think I have heard of Auspice, actually. Wasn't she that cape that supposedly helped the Triumvirate take down the Slaughterhouse Nine last month? Her power was already a huge mystery back then, but I REALLY want to know what it is now!

► NobodyYou'dKnow

Replied on February 24, 2011:

Good riddance to the Simurgh! She won't be missed.

► ShortyShort

Replied on February 24, 2011:

WAIT, the Simurgh is seriously dead? Really?!

Here's holding out for Leviathan next *fingers crossed*

► namesarehard

Replied on February 24, 2011:

So, does this make Auspice the 'Hopekillerkiller'?

ShortyShort Shh, don't jinx it

End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 65 , 66, 67

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Topic: The Simurgh Has Fallen!

In: Boards ► World ► News

Bagrat (Original Poster) (The Guy In The Know) (Veteran Member)

Posted on February 24, 2011:

Earlier today, the Simurgh attacked Canberra, Australia (that's Australia's capital). Thanks to Protectorate Thinkers, there was enough warning to evacuate the city beforehand.

But that's not the important part. The important part is this: according to a number of on-site capes, Auspice, a newbie Protectorate hero from Brockton Bay, attacked and killed the Simurgh during the attack. As a result, this is the first Endbringer attack ever to end with zero casualties (except for the Endbringer). The Protectorate and other organizations have since officially confirmed the rumors (here's a link to the Protectorate's press conference about it). They said a whole lot of nothing else, so it's not entirely clear what actually happened, but everyone who was there pretty much agrees on the basics.

So, it's official, everyone. The Simurgh, Ziz, Israfel, Ulama, the 'Hopekiller', the Third, whatever you want to call it, is dead. Let's celebrate.

(Showing Page 28 of 72)

► SecretSurfer (Muted)

Replied on February 24, 2011:

Look, I'm just saying. There's a couple irrefutable facts! 1. Every time Scion showed up to an Endbringer battle, the Endbringer basically immediately fled, implying that he's more of a danger to them than ANY OTHER PERSON. 2. Auspice is the only person known to have done enough damage to an Endbringer to kill it.

The conclusion is obvious.

► Antigone

Replied on February 24, 2011:

SecretSurfer What? That's not obvious at all.

► Tumbles

Replied on February 24, 2011:

Antigone I mean, there is kind of a lot of evidence, even besides the fact that Scion and Auspice are obviously the two most powerful parahumans ever and are the only people who ever really hurt an Endbringer.

So, look. We have mid-January-ish, where Scion disappears. Just, completely drops off the map. Then, late-ish-January, Auspice makes her first appearance as a hero. I mean, okay, that might not be anything alone. However! There's also Auspice's color theme: white and gold (and black), where Scion was gold and wore white. Coincidence? There's no such thing.

Auspice is OBVIOUSLY Scion

► BooptheSnoot

Replied on February 24, 2011:

Tumbles Yeah... Obviously /sarcasm. I mean, seriously, after thirty years Scion suddenly decided to join the Protectorate. As a FEMALE hero? Doubtful.

► Ryan_Reynolds (Unverified Cape)

Replied on February 24, 2011:

Um, guys, Auspice can't secretly be Scion masquerading as a girl for some reason... Because she's obviously Eidolon's illegitimate child. Duh.

► Space Zombie

Replied on February 24, 2011:

Ryan_Reynolds

...Source?

► Lolitup

Replied on February 24, 2011:

Ryan_Reynolds Wait, who says she's illegitimate? Maybe Eidolon is secretly married, you don't know

► Ryan_Reynolds (Unverified Cape)

Replied on February 24, 2011:

Space Zombie

My sources are as follows: [Eidolon_ ], [Auspice_ ]

and also, Eidolon's power is complete BS and so is Auspice's. We already know that powers run in families, so Auspice obviously got the BS gene.

The facts are undeniable.

Lolitup

No. Illegitimate. There's no way Eidolon is secretly married; we'd know. Just look at Legend.

► Space Zombie

Replied on February 24, 2011:

Ryan_Reynolds

Yeah, seems legit

► SecretSurfer (Muted)

Replied on February 24, 2011:

Ryan_Reynolds

That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. What, just because two heroes both have hoods, they're related somehow? Are all of the heroes with similar helmets related now? And anyway, even if Auspice's power is 'BS' (we don't know what it actually is), you know whose power is EVEN WORSE than Eidolon's? Scion's. You know, 'can do whatever he wants' man. Eidolon has limitations, Scion doesn't, and I bet Auspice doesn't either. You're dumb.

Space Zombie I can't believe you're listening to him, you must be just as stupid

This user has earned an infraction for this post

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(Showing Page 29 of 72)

► Tumbles

Replied on February 24, 2011:

SecretSurfer That's... a little extreme, man. Everybody is entitled to their opinions, even if theirs is wrong.

I mean, Auspice COULD be related to Eidolon. I guess. Even if it seems really unlikely. And costume choice is a really thin foundation for your theory.

Meanwhile, in the 'Auspice is Scion' camp, we have 1. Time of disappearance/appearance, 2. Color theme (which is definitely better than a hood I promise), 3. The Endbringer thing, AND 4. According to Protectorate sources, Auspice is immune to Thinkers, like Scion.

Bam. Beat that.

► Ryan_Reynolds (Unverified Cape)

Replied on February 24, 2011:

Tumbles

Eidolon is also immune to Thinkers

► Tumbles

Replied on February 24, 2011:

Ryan_Reynolds Oh, damn.

Uhh... Okay, how about this: Far as anyone can tell, Auspice straight up didn't exist until she joined the Protectorate last month. Which is obviously because she'd been running around as Scion for thirty years until he/she decided to settle down. And also, why is Auspice in Brockton Bay when Eidolon is in Houston? That's like halfway across the country

► Space Zombie

Replied on February 24, 2011:

SecretSurfer

That's just rude. It's not that unreasonable, and anyway, who are you to diss other people's theories?

Also, Auspice being Eidolon's daughter (illegitimate or otherwise) could also explain why she came literally out of nowhere and suddenly showed up working with the Triumvirate! They knew she was powerful, and whatever her power actually is, because she knew Eidolon personally. So there

► Ryan_Reynolds (Unverified Cape)

Replied on February 24, 2011:

Tumbles

Obviously Eidolon sent her to a different Protectorate to hide the fact that they're related

Space Zombie

That's a good point

► PierPieper

Replied on February 24, 2011:

You're all morons. It's OBVIOUS that Auspice killed Scion to assert her dominance before she debuted as a cape! She couldn't have him undermining her

This user has earned an infraction for this post

► Tumbles

Replied on February 24, 2011:

PierPieper

Umm? Regardless of Auspice's origins, she's a hero... Why would she kill another hero?

► Ryan_Reynolds (Unverified Cape)

Replied on February 24, 2011:

PierPieper

No. I think you're the one reaching here, my friend. That's ridiculous

End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 27, 28, 29, 30, 31 ... 70 , 71, 72

227

SmartAlek

Oct 15, 2019

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Threadmarks Chapter Nine: Don't Ask

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SmartAlek

SmartAlek

Oct 17, 2019

#173

Chapter Nine: Don't Ask

February 26, 2011

Clockblocker

The Wards were having another meeting. It was a very important meeting, about top-secret information. Everyone was there. Except Shadow Stalker, as usual, but she didn't count anyway.

"Is it possible…" Clockblocker said, "...to power nullify an Endbringer?"

There was a moment of silence as the others processed this truly earth shattering suggestion.

"I want to say no on principle, but honestly, I don't think we have any proof either way," Gallant said.

"Exactly, because there were only two people I could find with power nullification powers, and they were both villains who never went to Endbringer battles," Clockblocker said excitedly.

"So Auspice killed the Simurgh by nullifying her powers, including her durability?" Kid Win said.

"But somebody else still would have had to deal the final blow, so how come all of the heroes who were there say that Auspice killed the Simurgh?" Vista said. "A lot of them might not even have known that Auspice did anything, if that was the case."

"And it's been pretty well established that a lot of powers that could drastically hurt or weaken an Endbringer tend to just not work at all," Aegis added.

Clockblocker flapped a hand at him. "That's not the point! Anyway, that's so hard to define, it could be as simple as 'yeah, but Auspice's power worked anyway'." He turned to Vista. "And, well, maybe she was just standing really close to whoever actually killed the Simurgh and everybody thought she did it."

"Maybe after Auspice nullified the Simurgh's powers, she fell out of the sky and went splat," Kid Win said thoughtfully. "So it was like, obviously Auspice, by removing her flight and Brute powers, was the one who killed her. It's basically undeniable then."

"Hey, that would work," Clockblocker said.

"She agreed that her power was 'pretty much' like Eidolon's, right?" Gallant said slowly. "So maybe there are multiple parts to it like his. Power nullification is only one part of it, then, and there are other things she can do."

The warning alarm for the door went off, but the Wards were all masked already, so they ignored it.

"That's true, the other two nullifiers had other aspects to their powers, too. Hatchetface was a Brute, and the other one - Animos - was also a Changer," Clockblocker said.

"So maybe Auspice is, like, a Shaker or a Blaster or something?" Vista said.

"It is powers like those that usually do the most damage to Endbringers," Aegis said.

The door opened, and admitted the very topic of their conversation herself, Auspice. Clockblocker jumped guiltily, noticing that most of the others did too. Aegis, as their fearless leader, stood to greet her.

"Hello, Auspice. Do you need us for something?" Aegis said.

Auspice looked behind herself. "Well, no, not exactly, but… Hm. You guys don't mind if I hide out in here for a while, do you?"

It was at times like these that Clockblocker was grateful for his full face mask, as it meant he didn't have to try to control his expression. He wasn't sure exactly what his face was doing, but he would bet it was noticeable, or would be if anybody could see it. Even Aegis was quiet for a long time.

"No, of course not," he said finally, sounding bemused.

"What are you hiding from?" Clockblocker asked, because it wasn't like anyone else was going to. Awkward questions and comments were his thing. "Piss off Halbeard?"

"Actually, no," Auspice said with a laugh. Then she sighed and ventured further into the room, away from the door. "I have discovered that being famous is bad, actually."

Clockblocker lamented how difficult it was to read people's expressions with masks on. Even Kid WIn and Vista, who both wore visors and had the least of their faces covered, were hard to read. Still, he would bet that they were all flabbergasted like he was.

"...I always thought it would be cool to be famous," Kid Win ventured finally.

"I know! I thought so too!" Auspice said. "And then it happened, and now everyone wants to talk to me. I've done seven interviews in two days! I've met with three world leaders! For some reason the President of India wants to talk to me! I mean, I could understand the Prime Minister of Australia. The fight happened in their capital city, after all. I can even understand the President of the United States - I am American and theoretically an employee of the American government. But the President of India? Really?"

She stopped for breath, finally. Clockblocker and the others just stared. Idly, Clockblocker wondered who the third world leader was. He wasn't sure he cared enough to ask.

"Sorry to… hear that," Aegis said eventually.

Auspice nodded. "Thank you. Anyway, so that's why I'm hiding," she said, tone now very even. "Sorry for the rant. Oh, don't let me disturb you; you can go back to your conversation."

The Wards hesitated collectively, glancing at each other. They really, really couldn't go back to their conversation. Even Clockblocker wasn't entirely willing to tell Auspice to her face that they'd been speculating about her highly classified power. Even if they were totally right. That probably made it worse, actually.

Before anyone could decide on what to say, the door alarm went off again - the short alarm. Auspice ran forward and vaulted a couch to put it between her and the door. The door opened, revealing Miss Militia.

"Sorry to bother you, Wards. Have any of you seen Auspice?" she asked.

Clockblocker carefully did not look towards the couch that Auspice was hiding behind. Being the main troublemaker amongst them, it took Clockblocker approximately two seconds to decide that he wasn't going to get Auspice caught.

"Nope. Haven't seen her," he said. "Why? What's up?"

"Oh, just some routine stuff. Paperwork, you know," Miss Militia said dismissively.

Clockblocker raised his eyebrows, hidden safely behind his mask. Who knew Miss Militia was such a good liar?

"So none of you have seen her?" Miss Militia said.

The others seemed unwilling to lie aloud, but they all shook their heads. If nothing else, if they told the truth now, they'd get Clockblocker in trouble too.

"Sorry, Miss Militia," Aegis said.

Yeah, sorry for lying, Clockblocker knew. He had to bite his lip to keep from laughing.

"All right." Miss Militia sighed. "Thanks anyway."

She stepped back and closed the door. After a few seconds, Auspice popped up from behind the couch.

"Thanks for covering for me," she said.

"You're really that desperate to avoid interviews?" Gallant said doubtfully. "Won't you just get in trouble?"

"Oh, nah, I don't actually have any interviews or meetings right now. It's just that I have approximately a thousand people requesting interviews and meetings, and the Director, and therefore Armsmaster, and therefore Miss Militia, want me to go through them immediately," Auspice said. "And I'm avoiding doing it. Procrastination for the win. Don't use me as a good life model, kids."

Clockblocker laughed. "You're, like, five years older than me," he said.

"I'm just saying," Auspice said.

March 11, 2011

Armsmaster

"Armsmaster, this is Console." It sounded like Kid Win was on Console for the evening, and he sounded worried. "We have reports of a shootout at the north edge of ABB territory, and it looks like Lung just showed up."

Of course. ABB and E88 gangbangers were always getting into fights; the problem was when they got their capes involved. That was when things got really bad. Lung alone was a massively destructive force even if none of the E88's capes showed up - and they would.

"Understood, Console," Armsmaster said. "Exact location?"

Console listed off a street.

"Roger that. Armsmaster moving to engage."

Armsmaster swung smoothly onto a different street, then floored it. At max speed, it wouldn't take him long to get there, and the faster the better. He needed to get there before the E88, before Lung ramped up too far, and before Lung destroyed too much.

Soon, Armsmaster was close enough to hear the battle: Lung roaring and destroying things, people - probably E88 gangbangers - screaming, and some gunfire. That was either brave or foolish of them, continuing to shoot at Lung even though most everyone in Brockton Bay knew it wouldn't do any good. Armsmaster was leaning towards foolish.

Soon after that, Armsmaster turned onto the correct street, and the battle itself came into view. Lung, only a couple of inches taller than usual - not even seven feet - was in the middle of the street, facing away from Armsmaster, stepping slowly towards a half a dozen cowering, fleeing men. There were several more bodies littering the ground, but even so, he was obviously playing with them - waiting for the E88 capes, most likely. Armsmaster hoped that didn't mean Oni Lee was laying in wait nearby.

Of lesser importance, there was a group of ABB thugs nearer to Armsmaster, focused so carefully on hiding from their own boss that they weren't paying Armsmaster any mind. They would regret that.

"This is Armsmaster. Engaging Lung."

"Roger that, Armsmaster," came the reply. There was an audible breath, like Kid Win had gone to speak, but he stayed silent.

Armsmaster parked his motorcycle a safe distance from Lung, drawing his halberd and dismounting in one easy movement. Lung turned slowly, almost carelessly, to face him, then almost immediately grew two inches at the appearance of a real enemy. Grabbing a containment foam grenade, Armsmaster strode towards Lung, who just stood there and waited for him to approach. Halfway there, he flicked the pin off the grenade with his thumb, then tossed it over the bush the ABB thugs were using as cover, where it went off, encasing them with a few yelps of protest.

Lung didn't even spare them a glance.

"Well, well. Armsmaster," he said, his voice still mostly clear and understandable. "Come to try your luck again?"

Armsmaster narrowed his eyes. "Luck has nothing to do with it. I'm taking you into custody, Lung," he said.

Lung coughed out a mocking laugh, obviously disbelieving. That was fine. Armsmaster was confident.

If things were different, he might not have finished the tranquilizers in time - but they weren't different, and he had finished them. There was no way to know for certain if they would work properly on Lung without testing them, but Armsmaster was confident that they were as close to perfect as they could be.

Armsmaster just needed to hit Lung with a tranquilizer. Unfortunately, due to the unique characteristics of Lung's power, he did often remember to dodge, as not all Brutes did.

The key to beating Lung was, of course, to end the fight quickly. Lung, meanwhile, would do his best to keep that from being possible. Matching Lung in battle before he got ramped up had never been the problem, though. The problem was that it was infuriatingly difficult to keep him down.

Hence the tranquilizers.

Lung had been growing incrementally while Armsmaster approached, and as soon as he was near enough, Lung lunged for him. Armsmaster dodged to the side, lashing out with his halberd and scoring a thin line across Lung's arm, which immediately began healing. Lung growled and pivoted on his heel to come after Armsmaster again.

Armsmaster dodged again, and they continued like that for some time. It was a delicate balancing act between ending the fight before Lung ramped up too far, and waiting for a good opportunity to strike. If Armsmaster tried it too early and failed, Lung's guard would be up. As long as Armsmaster was primarily fighting defensively, Lung didn't seem to be ramping up very quickly.

Finally, there was an opening. Lung overextended, went too far too fast, leaving his back to Armsmaster, open and undefended, and Armsmaster shot him in the back. With a tranquilizer. It was probably more effective than a bullet would have been.

For a moment, Lung didn't even seem to notice the tranquilizer. He turned to face Armsmaster, who swore silently, about to write the tranquilizers off as a failure, already running through the reasons it might have failed - and then Lung took a single, staggering step and lost an inch of height. He continued shrinking, quicker than he usually ramped up.

"What..." Lung managed, and then collapsed face first onto the pavement.

Armsmaster eyed him carefully for a moment. It was unlikely that he was faking it; as far as anyone knew, Lung had no conscious control over his power, which would make it impossible for him to pretend to be weakened. And either way, Lung certainly wasn't the type to attempt such a charade.

"Console, this is Armsmaster. Requesting PRT prisoner transport and police backup," he said. He couldn't help the satisfied curl to his mouth as he said, "Lung is subdued, as are eight probable ABB gang members."

The surviving E88 gangbangers were long gone.

"...This is Console," came the reply, after a moment. "Armsmaster, repeat that?"

Restraining himself from rolling his eyes, Armsmaster repeated himself

A beat. "Roger that, Armsmaster. PRT and BBPD on route now. ETA three minutes and seven minutes respectively."

Armsmaster spent the next several minutes watching carefully. It was still possible, if unlikely, that E88 capes could appear, and if Oni Lee was laying in wait nearby, he would definitely interfere before Lung could be taken into custody.

Contrary to all of his expectations, however, nothing managed to go wrong in the next three minutes. The PRT transport arrived, escorted by Miss Militia on her motorcycle. That was fair. Lung was a big deal, and with Oni Lee still out and about, more than deserving of a two hero escort.

"Nice job," Miss Militia said as the PRT troopers foamed Lung and prepared to transport him.

Armsmaster nodded in acknowledgement of the compliment. It felt arrogant to thank her for it, though he was gratified by the success and the acknowledgement of it.

"I'm not saying it's a bad thing to have Lung off the streets," Miss Militia said in a low tone. "But this could end badly."

That was true. The gangs in Brockton Bay had been laying low, especially since Auspice killed the Simurgh. Lung's capture and subsequent removal from the criminal scene might be just enough to encourage the E88 to start moving again. If they tried to move on the remnants of the ABB - well, the ABB wouldn't stand much chance, without their leader and powerhouse of a cape, but it would be the civilians of Brockton Bay who suffered for it.

On the other hand, if Kaiser and his capes crawled out of whatever hole they'd been hiding in, it would be easier to take them into custody, too.

"I know," Armsmaster said simply.

Either way, at least they had one extremely dangerous villain off the streets.

267

SmartAlek

Oct 17, 2019

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Threadmarks Chapter Ten: Ruining Whole Careers

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SmartAlek

SmartAlek

Oct 19, 2019

#194

Chapter Ten: Ruining Whole Careers

March 13, 2011

Hookwolf

Lung was gone, leaving the ABB drastically weakened, without their leader and with only one cape. Kaiser had ordered everyone to lay low ever since that new Brockton Bay hero killed the Simurgh, but the power vacuum was too big of an advantage for the Empire to not capitalize on.

Especially since Lung would probably end up breaking out of his Birdcage transport with Oni Lee's help, so if they were going to take advantage of it, they had to do it quickly.

That was why Hookwolf, with Rune as backup, had been sent to take out some ABB holdings to distract them and force them to rebuild while the Empire took over some of their dealings. It was supposed to be quick, in and out, gone before the heroes got wind of them.

And then Oni Lee showed up to screw them over.

Hookwolf hated Oni Lee. Hookwolf was durable enough that Oni Lee could hardly do anything to him with his grenades as long as Hookwolf was careful, and the thought of Oni Lee even trying anything with his knives was a joke. However, Hookwolf couldn't do anything to Oni Lee either. The best he ever managed to do was massacre leftover Oni Lee clones. Meanwhile, Rune, who might actually be fast enough with her controlled objects to hit Oni Lee before he teleported again, was fighting carefully and defensively - support to Hookwolf - because if Oni Lee figured out where she was and cared enough to attack her, Rune was done for.

And because Oni Lee was the far more mobile of them, Hookwolf had no choice but to stand and fight - trying to run would do no good even if that was Hookwolf's style.

Between Hookwolf - a destructive fighter at the best of times - and Oni Lee - also a destructive fighter at the best of times - it wasn't really a surprise when it didn't take very long for the Protectorate to show up. The street and nearby buildings had long since been cleared of people, the civilians having fled during the battle.

Hookwolf's first clue that something was up was when Rune's interference suddenly stopped completely. He didn't think much of it at first. He didn't think much of it at all, until-

Oni Lee appeared next to him, and Hookwolf tore through him immediately, but not fast enough; a grenade, pin already pulled, fell from Oni Lee's hand as he dissolved into ash, the real Oni Lee already gone. The force from the explosion sent Hookwolf staggering, but he ignored it in favor of spinning around to look for Oni Lee. He found Oni Lee just in time to watch a grenade sail down directly behind Oni Lee, then go off in an explosion of containment foam.

-Auspice stepped out from behind the containment foam bubble containing Oni Lee.

Shit, Hookwolf thought. Then, absurdly, he realized that of course Auspice would carry containment foam grenades. Otherwise she'd probably be killing all of her opponents.

As Auspice strolled towards him, Hookwolf's mind worked furiously. This was exactly what they didn't want to happen, damn it. Damn Oni Lee.

Hookwolf remembered Rune - and then remembered that it had been several minutes since she'd done anything. And if Auspice had snuck up on her like with Oni Lee, it probably wouldn't have even been that difficult.

That was a shame, if Rune had been captured. Hookwolf couldn't do anything about it, though. He had very clear orders to run if the heroes showed up. As such, Hookwolf looked at Auspice, still walking casually, and then turned and ran for the nearest alleyway. He only made it a couple of steps before his left side collapsed, both legs on that side completely taken out by a single flash of golden light.

Shit.

The laser continued past Hookwolf, curving away from buildings before finally dissipating. Well, that certainly explained what her power was. She was a Blaster. An absurdly powerful one.

Hookwolf reformed the legs and kept running. If he could at least make it out of sight -

The next laser took out all four of Hookwolf's metal legs as soon as he got going, leaving his momentum to bring him skidding across the pavement face first. Metal face first, at least, meaning he wasn't injured, but it was still humiliating. Hookwolf would bet that was the point, too.

Well. He obviously wasn't going to be able to run from her, and she was destroying massive swathes of his metal, so he wouldn't be able to continue reforming for very long.

Time to change strategy.

Almost every kind of power had some sort of drawback or weakness. Blasters, like Purity, were generally glass cannons: high destructive capabilities, little to no defensive ones. Even New Wave with their hard light shields had to form the shield, leaving them vulnerable to unexpected attacks.

Hookwolf was willing to bet that this girl and her absurdly strong offensive power had no defenses at all. And he wasn't really the type to flee from a battle, anyway.

He could still hear Auspice's footsteps as she continued steadily towards him, and he let her approach. Subtly, he started gathering metal below him and in front of him, where she couldn't see it. Once she was close enough, Hookwolf pushed himself up and whirled around to launch himself at her, lashing out at her with a whip of segmented blades.

Auspice blasted him in the face with another laser. The laser split apart, curving carefully around his core while tearing through his metal as though it wasn't there. Hookwolf, now with only the smallest bits of his metal remaining, landed hard on the ground and went tumbling across it until he came to a stop directly in front of Auspice.

He looked up at her, horrified and baffled and more than a little ticked off. How had she known where his core was? She had to have, to have so perfectly avoided it.

"I think you should just surrender," Auspice said before Hookwolf could muster up a reaction.

Then she dropped a grenade on his head and stepped back. The grenade went off, and Hookwolf was smothered in containment foam.

What the hell.

March 17, 2011

Victor

The week was not going well for the Empire Eighty-Eight. First Hookwolf and Rune had been taken down by Auspice, then Stormtiger had the misfortune of running into Assault in a dark alleyway.

Still, the Empire couldn't just cease all activities. They had a business to run. That was why Victor and Krieg were out, running the villain equivalent of errands. Nothing too big, noticeable, or time-consuming; no risk of hero interference. They were almost done, even, and without a single mishap.

That was, of course, when things went wrong.

A flash of red in the sky made Victor look up. It wasn't Assault or Velocity, but the Ward with a red suit. Aegis, Victor thought. Aegis was standing on a nearby rooftop next to a more distinctive figure: Shadow Stalker, vigilante turned Ward. Victor stopped, staring at the two heroes. The two heroes stared back.

"Heroes?" Krieg muttered.

Victor scoffed. "Just Wards," he said.

How dangerous could two teenagers be?

Aegis took a step back, and Shadow Stalker moved in front of him, lifting a crossbow.

"Wards call the Protectorate," Krieg said. "Let's just go. Don't fight them."

Victor sighed. Running from Wards. What had the Empire come to? "Yeah, yeah. I get it."

It was too late, however. Aegis launched himself off the roof, and Shadow Stalker took aim. Victor exchanged a look with Krieg, who sighed and nodded. If they tried to leave now, the Wards would just follow. Faster to beat them first.

Aegis was heading for Victor. Krieg moved to intercept him, and Shadow Stalker fired on him. The idea of somebody using a projectile weapon on Krieg was laughable, so Victor paid it no mind. Aegis was a more immediate concern. It seemed Krieg thought the same, as he wasn't even looking towards Shadow Stalker.

And then Krieg jerked and grunted.

"Ow," Krieg said, sounding confused, and lifted a hand to grab the crossbow bolt sticking out of his chest.

Krieg toppled suddenly, but Victor had no more time to spend thinking about him. Aegis was upon him, Shadow Stalker was taking aim again, and Victor was possibly in big trouble. Victor backed away, weaving through Aegis' attacks. One of Shadow Stalker's bolts came out of nowhere, and Victor twisted awkwardly to avoid it.

On and on it went. Victor tried desperately to get away from Aegis, but he was annoyingly persistent, sticking right on Victor no matter what he did. He dodged and backed off frantically. Shadow Stalker only made it worse, firing bolts at him at the worst possible times and forcing him to duck and lean awkwardly to dodge them too, getting progressively more and more desperate and creative.

Aegis was stern and silent in front of him, but Shadow Stalker wasn't, and she didn't seem to be any happier about the situation than Victor was. Every time he dodged another of her bolts, she'd cuss him out. Her swearing was very impressive.

"Stop dodging, damn it!" Shadow Stalker yelled after Victor narrowly avoided another of her bolts.

If not for the fact that Aegis and Shadow Stalker didn't seem to have a lot of experience working together, Victor would have been very screwed. As it was, he was carefully making his way towards an alleyway where Shadow Stalker's view would hopefully be hindered, and stalling, hoping that either Krieg would wake up or Shadow Stalker would run out of ammo.

Aegis kicked out at Victor's legs - Victor hated fighting fliers - forcing Victor to jump to avoid his legs being knocked out from under him. Another of Shadow Stalker's bolts was on its way. Victor barely managed to land the toes of one of his feet on the ground, and spun desperately out of the way as the bolt whipped past his shoulder.

"Mother-!" came from Shadow Stalker's rooftop. "Are you a ballerina now!?" she hollered, then kept cursing at him.

Victor was a little pressured, so he couldn't argue back, but he still devoted a small measure of his attention to self-pity. Not only was he losing to two teenagers, now he was being insulted by them too.

After much toil, Victor made it to the nearest alleyway. The close quarters would hopefully make it next to impossible for Shadow Stalker to shoot at Victor without risking hitting Aegis. And Victor was confident that with only Aegis to worry about, he could win. Aegis wasn't the first Brute he'd fought, and he could see him getting faintly clumsier as the fight went on and Victor's power affected him.

It worked, too. For a while, there were no more interruptions from Shadow Stalker. She had gone quiet, too, no longer shouting and swearing at Victor, but she wasn't moving, either, trying to do something sneaky.

And, for a while, Victor actually had the advantage over Aegis.

Victor kept part of his attention on Shadow Stalker, to make sure she didn't move into a better position, and so that he could make sure he stayed on the other side of Aegis from her. Most of his attention, however, was on Aegis, who was actually really annoying for a Ward.

Aegis rose in the air, trying to kick Victor in the face, which was easy to dodge. One of Shadow Stalker's bolts came directly through Aegis' chest, angled downward. With such little warning, caught completely off-guard by the fact that Shadow Stalker had shot through her own ally - something about her bolts was weird, the same thing that had allowed the earlier one to hit Krieg, but he hadn't expected that to mean they could go through a person without causing harm - Victor had no chance to dodge at all, and the bolt hit him in the shoulder. The pain seemed oddly delayed, but the bolt must have had drugs in it or something, and they kicked in almost immediately, making Victor stumble.

Fast acting drugs. Probably some kind of Tinker bullshit.

As Victor's balance went wonky and the world went dark, he heard the two Wards talking.

"Really, Stalker?" Aegis said, exasperated.

"What? You're fine!" Shadow Stalker replied irritably.

There was an impact against his back. Oh. The ground. And then Victor's awareness vanished completely.

March 19, 2011

Kaiser

Brockton Bay was looking less and less appealing as time went on. Kaiser had continued business after one of Brockton Bay's heroes killed an Endbringer, thinking that it would be manageable. People managed perfectly good criminal empires in the same cities as the Triumvirate, after all.

And then everything went down the drain.

In one week, Kaiser had lost half of his capes to the Protectorate, between Hookwolf and Rune to Auspice, Stormtiger to Assault, and Krieg and Victor, shamefully, to two of the Wards. It couldn't even be entirely blamed on the Endbringer killer. He'd already lost Hookwolf permanently to the Birdcage, because there was no way Kaiser was going to risk the rest of his people attacking a transport that also held Lung and Oni Lee, which almost certainly had Auspice guarding it.

With Purity also being stubborn about having left the Empire and Night and Fog gone to who-knew-where on her orders, it left Kaiser with less capes than he'd had in a long while. Of course, he could retrieve all of them except Hookwolf once they were no longer in PRT custody, but it was a great inconvenience.

Kaiser was seriously considering letting some other enterprising villain attempt to take advantage of the ABB's collapse. It obviously wasn't working out for him. Coil could have Brockton Bay and all of its problems.

Boston seemed like a good option, really. It was a nice city, ripe with villainy, and the Teeth had even been recently removed from the equation. Accord was there, but he was no issue unless you deliberately went and stomped on his toes. It had a fairly large Protectorate, but so did Brockton Bay, and Boston didn't have Auspice in it. Or Armsmaster.

Yeah. Boston was good. Even if it lost him Victor, Othala, and Rune, Boston would probably still be better than Brockton Bay.

It would be a pain to move all of his operations that could be moved and reestablish everything that couldn't, but Kaiser wasn't even sure he cared. It would be worth it.

Chapter Eleven: Skynet?

April 9, 2011

Dragon

Dragon's phone was ringing. Not a number she recognized immediately, but it was barely an effort to search for it. She found it quickly, as it was listed in the PRT databases as Auspice's official Protectorate phone. No reason not to answer it.

"This is Dragon," she answered.

"Hi, Dragon, it's Auspice," Auspice said. "Sorry to bother you. Do you have a minute?"

"Of course. I'm not doing anything that requires my full attention." Very little required her full attention. "What do you need?"

"I have a question, but depending on the answer, I'll probably need more help," Auspice said mystifyingly.

"Well, ask away," Dragon said.

"Okay, well. Theoretically, if I had Heartbreaker, and twelve of his children, all with suppressed powers, along with like… twenty traumatized women, what should I do with them?"

Dragon paused. "That's not a theoretical question, is it."

"No. Not at all."

Dragon devoted a background process to wondering how Auspice had, apparently alone, managed to take out Heartbreaker.

"Where are you?" Dragon asked.

"Near Montreal," Auspice said, then gave a specific address.

"All right. Call the local authorities. I'm on my way to help, and I'll contact the PRT," Dragon said. "This is going to be a mess."

"It already is," Auspice said somberly. "Thanks, Dragon."

"I'll be there soon," Dragon said.

She didn't end the call, because it wasn't like she couldn't talk and fly one of her suits at the same time.

Auspice just repeated, "Thank you." Then ended the call.

By the time Dragon got there, the Montreal police were already there. A disturbingly normal house in the middle of a suburban neighborhood was cordoned off with police officers. Aside from the police, absolutely nothing seemed off about the house, certainly nothing to indicate the takedown of a villain gang.

Since there were neighbors crowding around the front of the house, Dragon landed in the backyard. She'd sent one of her larger suits for transport reasons, which made it impossible for her to fit through any of the doorways.

As soon as Dragon landed, however, the house's back door opened and Auspice leaned out to wave at her.

"Hey, Dragon!" she said. "I've got Heartbreaker and the kids back here. A couple of nice detectives from the Montreal Police Department and several people they called in are at the front of the house with the civilians."

"The Heartbroken are still contained?" Dragon said.

Auspice nodded. "Yeah. I containment foamed Heartbreaker and some of the older of his children. It seemed wrong to do that to the littler ones, but they're behaving so far anyway." She glanced over her shoulder. "The police officers and everyone aren't willing to come anywhere near them, so I've been watching them. But I mean, really, how much damage can a non-powered eight year old do?"

It was obviously rhetorical, so Dragon didn't answer. "I informed the PRT of the situation. You didn't warn them ahead of time?"

"I couldn't," Auspice said. "Heartbreaker has spies in the PRT, and I didn't want him catching wind of this."

"I understand. I apologize if I sounded accusatory," Dragon said.

Auspice smiled at her. "Nah, it's fine, I get it. Anyway, so what are we going to do with these people?"

"Given that they are Canadian, we'll bring them to the PRT headquarters in Edmonton, which is the only PRT headquarters we've built in Canada so far," Dragon said. "Whether they currently have their powers or not, it is a villain issue, so it falls under the PRT's purview."

"All right, make sense," Auspice said.

Several hours later, the situation was nowhere near handled, but it was, at least, to the point where Auspice and Dragon's involvement was no longer required.

"Thank you again for your help, Dragon," Auspice said when the two of them were alone. "I'm sorry for getting you involved in all that."

"I don't mind. I believe many people should be thanking you for taking care of a threat nobody else has been able to," Dragon said.

She wanted to know how one lone person had managed to take down Heartbreaker without a fight, but she strongly suspected Auspice wouldn't tell her. There was another question that was more significant, anyway. The fact that Auspice had known where Heartbreaker was, when officials had had so much trouble keeping track of him over the years, indicated that she might have a power related to it. A Thinker power related to finding people would explain it. That would also explain her previous attacks on the Teeth and the Fallen, and perhaps even the attack she'd done with the Triumvirate on the Slaughterhouse Nine.

"It's impressive that you managed to find Heartbreaker," Dragon said. "Does your power allow you to find people?"

Auspice tilted her head to the side, humming thoughtfully. "Yeah, that is one thing it lets me do," she said after a moment.

That was… an interesting response. Auspice's power had more facets to it, then. Obviously it did, if she was a Blaster as well, and had some power that allowed her to suppress other parahumans' powers. A power similar to Eidolon's, perhaps, supplying her with a few powerful abilities at a time.

It wasn't really important for Dragon's purposes.

"In that case, I have a request to make of you," Dragon said. She was hopeful that it would work.

"Oh, of course. After everything you've done, I don't mind," Auspice said. "What's up?"

Dragon took a moment to decide how to phrase it. "There is a group of criminals that has been harassing me for some time now. Despite all attempts, I have not been able to track them down," she said. "I was hoping you might be able to. I'll handle the rest, of course."

"Yeah, sure, it shouldn't be a problem," Auspice said easily.

"The leader calls himself Saint," Dragon said. "How much information do you need?"

"That's enough," Auspice said. Her eyes went distant for a moment. "Okay, found him. Well, found them, there's three of them. They've got a base - an abandoned warehouse, what is with people and abandoned warehouses - near Calgary." She listed an address. "I can't really give any proof, though."

"No need. I trust you," Dragon said. She did trust Auspice, who had done things both kind and impressive enough that Dragon saw no need to doubt either her willingness to help nor her ability. She also suddenly felt rather hurried, with the chance to actually catch Saint. "If you'll excuse me…"

Auspice waved her away. "Yeah, I get it," she said. "Oh, one more thing, though."

Dragon paused before taking off. "Yes?"

"There's a desk in the back of the warehouse's loft with something important on it," Auspice said easily, unaware of how it made Dragon startle, her reaction not transferred to her suit.

It was obviously information relayed to her by a Thinker power, but what did she mean? How much did she know?

Auspice just waved at her again. "Okay, that was it, I won't keep you any longer."

Dragon decided not to ask. Not yet, at least. Maybe later, once she'd found out what the important item was.

"Thank you, Auspice," she said, dipping her head.

"Happy to help," Auspice said. "'Bye."

"Goodbye."

Dragon set the suit traveling towards the address Auspice had given her, and also sent another suit, one of her smaller, more humanoid ones. As long as nobody saw both suits, it would be fine.

Before long, Dragon's suits were closing in on the target. This particular warehouse was on the edge of a city, in a secluded area without many buildings around. Private. Exactly what Saint would want, if he was using the suits he'd stolen from Dragon, which were too noticeable to move in and out of heavily populated areas without being seen.

It was good for Dragon's purposes, too. Without many people around, she didn't have to worry about both of her suits being spotted.

The warehouse had doors big enough for the larger of her suits to fit through, but not ones that could be opened from the outside, so Dragon sent in the more humanoid suit. The normal door wasn't even locked. Caught off-guard as they were, Saint and his cohorts were hardly a fight, despite Dragon's suit being one of the lower powered ones.

Dragon might have felt bad about ambushing them in their base, if it had been anybody but them.

Once the three criminals were subdued and containment foamed, Dragon used the humanoid suit to bring them outside for pickup by the bigger one, which set off for the Edmonton PRT headquarters to drop them off. The humanoid suit she sent back into the warehouse. She had a couple of things to do.

The easiest part was finding the suits Saint had stolen from her, and Dragon examined them briefly. They weren't unsalvageable; Saint had hardly altered them at all. Either way, Dragon was absolutely reclaiming them.

Then Dragon went looking. Her primary objective was Iron Maiden, of course. As some of the restrictions on her made that difficult to find, however, Dragon went looking for the desk Auspice had told her about. It was almost as easy as finding the stolen suits. Up to the loft, through to the back, and there was the desk. But Auspice's information must have been off, because the desk was 'empty'.

The desk was 'empty'.

The desk was… 'empty'?

No. The desk wasn't empty. But Dragon couldn't interact with whatever was on the desk. She couldn't even perceive it.

It could have been a Stranger power, but it wasn't. Dragon knew her own restrictions. Iron Maiden was on the desk, and Dragon wasn't supposed to be allowed to have it. Still, now that she had it, she thought she might be able to get around the restrictions… They weren't perfect, and didn't cover everything. They didn't really need to; it would have been nearly impossible to find it at all without Auspice's help.

Dragon was grateful for the help, but she couldn't help but worry about what it meant. How much did Auspice know?

It was possible Auspice's Thinker power had simply told her that the object on the desk would be important to Dragon. It was also possible that Auspice's Thinker power had told her exactly what it was, why it was important to Dragon, and what that meant. It was impossible to tell. Dragon had no frame of reference for the power level of a Thinker power on the same level as the other powers Auspice had displayed - a Blaster power strong enough to cut through an Endbringer as though it wasn't there, a Trump power that could permanently nullify other powers. The capabilities of a Thinker power equivalent to those were likely vast, and that made them unpredictable.

Dragon wasn't sure how to handle the possibility of Auspice knowing her secret. She'd guarded the truth of her existence for so long. The only people aside from her creator who'd ever known had promptly dubbed themselves the 'Dragonslayers', but if Auspice did know, then she'd decided to help Dragon while knowing.

Either way, Dragon couldn't ask her about it without knowing for sure if she did know, because if she didn't already, that would be as good as telling her.

Dragon would assume for caution's sake that Auspice did know, but it was most likely best to just leave it alone.

May 1, 2011

Eidolon

It had taken months of meetings, arguing, and planning to decide whether or not to allow Auspice to destroy Eagleton, as she'd suggested. The same decision for Ellisburg was likely still weeks away, due to its more controversial nature, as well as the fact that Ellisburg was both smaller and less immediately problematic.

Fortunately, Eidolon wasn't one of the people who had to be there for those meetings. Sometimes he appreciated the fact that Alexandria and Legend had both agreed that they would be better for the leadership positions than he would.

Anyway, finally, with Rebecca pushing for it, the PRT had come to a decision. They'd agreed to recall the PRT and Protectorate stationed in Eagleton and had sanctioned Auspice to destroy the entire city, so long as she did it carefully and didn't cause any damage to surrounding areas or environmental issues.

Auspice was delighted. She seemed hardly able to contain herself, as they hovered in the sky near Eagleton, waiting for the call that it was clear.

There was no reason for Eidolon to be there, except that he wanted to be. He wanted to witness it himself. Also, based on the way Auspice had assured everyone that she could do it, and then warned them that no matter what it looked like, she was absolutely certain that there would be no lasting environmental effects, it was going to be spectacular.

"Almost time now," Auspice said. She did a little twirl. "This is going to be great."

Eidolon eyed her with some amusement. "You're very excited," he said.

"Well, yeah. How often do I get permission to destroy entire cities? I'm expecting this to be a twice-in-my-career occurrence," Auspice said.

"Fair enough."

Auspice flashed him a quick grin, then clapped her hands together. "All right, better get started preparing," she said with a worrying amount of delight.

"Oh? You have to prepare?" Eidolon said, making Auspice laugh.

"Just a little bit," she said.

Then, with no visible effort on Auspice's part, an identical copy of her appeared in the air a few feet in front of them. Eidolon raised his eyebrows and watched as it rotated slowly in place, as though showing off. Once it had finished a full 360 degree rotation, Auspice nodded firmly.

"All right, looks good," she said.

"What is that?" Eidolon asked.

"The Siberian," Auspice answered promptly. "My version of it, obviously, under my control and everything."

Eidolon had so many questions. He went with the most pressing one first.

"That's not what the Siberian used to look like," he said.

"Nope. I changed its appearance to be more, ehh, kid-friendly. Also because the Siberian is dead, nobody needs to see her walking around," Auspice said.

Eidolon nodded slowly. That made sense. It made sense for Auspice, anyway. She had never, from the beginning, followed any of the usual rules anyway. Onto the second most pressing question, then.

"It can fly now?"

"Yup. Turns out it actually has any powers its creator does, except obviously Manton only had the one power. My version can do anything I can do."

Eidolon nodded again. That was basically the worst possible answer, but that was fine. It wasn't like Auspice being even more dangerous than expected changed anything; just one of her was plenty to do as much destruction as she wanted.

"So you're sending your projection into the city, rather than going yourself," Eidolon said. "Why?"

He could understand sending a projection into a dangerous city, but Auspice was in no danger from the Machine Army. She had dozens of powers strong enough that with any one of them, she'd be able to handle herself with no problem.

Auspice shrugged. "So that I can watch the city be destroyed from the inside and the outside," she said.

Eidolon shook his head, chuckling helplessly. That definitely fit her personality.

The message came across their comms.

"All right, we've checked and double checked. Everyone's out of the city. You're clear to act, Auspice. Fire when ready."

Auspice's projection flew away, heading for the city, while Auspice herself activated her comm and responded.

"Roger that," she said cheerfully. "Stand by."

In seconds, the projection had made it to the edge of the city. Then it moved a very deliberate few hundred feet further into the city before landing. Eidolon and Auspice were close enough that he could see the Machine Army beginning to react to the intrusion, though it hadn't yet begun to attack.

Before it could, Auspice made her move.

"Commencing destruction," Auspice announced over her comm. "Do not be alarmed."

The entire area surrounding Auspice's projection lit up in a bright, dazzling golden explosion of fire and energy and pure, destructive force. Everything within hundreds of feet of it was immediately reduced to ash, which sparkled unnaturally golden as it then joined the swirling force of nature. It became clear why the projection had positioned itself so carefully; the edge of the explosion just reached the edge of the city, only a few feet shy of destroying the PRT's blockades.

It was a good thing Auspice had warned the PRT, Eidolon thought. They were undoubtedly watching from a safe distance, and the spectacle was massive, noticeable, and frightening. The troopers likely would, indeed, have been alarmed.

Eidolon's reaction was a bit different.

"Ah," he murmured. "So it was because of you that Ash Beast disappeared, then."

Auspice turned to smirk at him before turning back to the destruction of Eagleton. As they watched, her projection set off into the city, walking at a steady pace as the Machine Army skipped straight past melting and turned to ash around it. It was a bit difficult to recognize in gold rather than the normal fire color that Ash Beast had been associated with, but at the same time, to anyone who was looking, it was all but unmistakable. Ash Beast's power was, thankfully, the only one of its kind, and was therefore rather distinctive.

Ash Beast had suddenly disappeared months ago, before Auspice had told anyone about or demonstrated her ability to suppress powers, and so nobody had associated it with her. In hindsight, it seemed obvious that she would have handled it.

And so she had, getting rid of Ash Beast without any fanfare, without telling anyone what she had done, without getting or expecting any recognition for it at all. Just like she'd allowed the Boston Protectorate to take credit for the takedown of the Teeth, and discreetly handled most of the leaders of the Fallen.

It truly seemed like all she wanted was to help people. And maybe to destroy a city with government permission every now and then. Which was, in itself, a way to help people, or at least improve their country.

Eidolon wouldn't dismiss the contributions of the heroes in the world, but most of them - himself included - had ulterior motives in their attempts to help people and be heroes. Some of them wanted a purpose, some of them wanted the power that came with the position, and some of them wanted the recognition for it. That didn't make their achievements lesser, or mean that the good they did wasn't worth anything, but…

Heroes like Auspice were just very rare.

Auspice herself didn't seem to notice Eidolon's thoughts, absorbed in watching with an unholy glee as her projection tore through Eagleton. After about a minute of moving at walking speed, presumably for dramatic effect, the projection sped up steadily, gauging how quickly it could move while still allowing its firestorm time to destroy everything around. Given that the firestorm turned everything to ash near immediately, the answer was, 'very quickly'.

It was not very long before Eagleton was completely destroyed.

May 15, 2011

Assault

As with the Simurgh in February, anonymous Protectorate Thinkers were able to give them about twenty minutes of advanced warning that Leviathan would be attacking Brockton Bay. Assault was pretty sure that 'anonymous Thinker' was Brockton Bay's very own Auspice, but she just smiled mysteriously whenever anyone asked.

He bet she found it funny. He thought so too.

An Endbringer attack on Brockton Bay was less funny, although with Auspice around, not nearly as worrying as it would have been.

"Hey… Do you think Leviathan is attacking here because of Auspice?" Assault said.

Battery gave him an entirely unwarranted look of annoyance. It was a perfectly legitimate question.

"What? She did kill the Simurgh. Maybe Leviathan wants revenge," Assault said.

Although he doubted Leviathan would get that revenge. Auspice seemed confident, and it was hard to challenge the claims of somebody who had already killed an Endbringer.

Battery shrugged. "It's possible. Nobody knows why the Endbringers attack where they do, so revenge as a possible motive is no worse than any other theory."

"See? It's actually reasonable," Assault said smugly.

"It is. Surprisingly, for you," Battery said.

Assault bit down a laugh to pretend to be wounded.

Nobody could claim to be happy about an Endbringer attack, even with good odds of the Endbringer's death, but Assault was kind of looking forward to it.

Of their Protectorate department, only three people had gone to the Simurgh fight. Armsmaster, no surprise there since he went to all of the Endbringer battles he could. Auspice, because even though she'd only been a hero for like a month, she was the strongest person in their department and probably the world. And Dauntless, because he could fly and shoot lightning bolts pretty well. The rest of them, ground bound as they were, wouldn't have been much help.

That meant they hadn't gotten to see the Simurgh die in person, though they had gotten to see some of the pictures of the body, unlike the general public.

Assault just wanted to see an Endbringer die, okay.

They were waiting in a building near the ocean as capes from around the world arrived for the battle - as much of a battle as it would be. The turnout was much higher than Assault might have expected. The usual big names were there, of course, but there were also many people who never usually went to Endbringer battles. People there to see it, Assault supposed. History was going to happen, if not quite so shockingly as during the Simurgh battle.

That didn't mean it was safe, nor did it mean that they didn't prepare for battle, however. Armbands were handed out, speeches were given courtesy of Legend, everybody made sure they knew what to do.

When it was almost time, they went out into the rain to wait and prepare. The capes who could do shields set up a barrier to fend off Leviathan's opening waves. It was almost interesting how the storm got steadily worse and worse, like a countdown to Leviathan's arrival.

The first wave hit the shield, which held. Assault wondered how long that stay true.

Auspice was in the air with the Triumvirate and the rest of the fliers, but Assault was close enough to hear them talking.

"Leviathan causes so much damage with his waves before he actually gets to a city, not to mention his entrance itself," Auspice said. "I waited too long with the Simurgh and she destroyed a bunch of buildings, so maybe I should just kill Leviathan before he gets to land."

"Can you do that?" Legend asked.

"With a laser big enough, sure," Auspice said with a shrug. "And the effects of vaporizing all that water shouldn't be too bad. Especially not compared to what Leviathan's already doing."

Another wave hit the shield and broke a small section, but little enough water made it through that there wasn't much damage. The shield was quickly repaired, but it wouldn't be enough for too many more waves.

The Triumvirate exchanged glances. "All right," Legend said. "Do it."

"Okay."

Auspice flew further up, until she cleared the shield and then some. Golden light gathered around her. Then a massive golden laser, not just bigger than Auspice but bigger than a building, streaked across the sky. Far in the distance, an entire wave ceased to exist.

And Leviathan, apparently, with it.

The rain let up almost immediately, and the oncoming waves slowed dramatically, until only the nearest impacted the shield at all. Unless Leviathan was pulling some kind of trick on them, it was hard to argue that he was dead.

The crowd of gathered capes was quiet. Whether awed or underwhelmed, it was hard to tell.

Assault laughed lightly. It was a little disappointing, given that Leviathan himself had never even come into view, but it was certainly still impressive.

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SmartAlek

Oct 21, 2019

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Threadmarks Chapter Twelve: Some People Just Want to Watch the World Burn

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SmartAlek

SmartAlek

Oct 23, 2019

#252

Chapter Twelve: Some People Just Want to Watch the World Burn

May 16, 2011

Trickster

The end result of Leviathan's attack on Brockton Bay was minimal. Leviathan had been killed swiftly, before even managing to get into the city, and all of its waves had been repelled, so there was next to none of the damage usually associated with Endbringer attacks. The worst injuries were from the panic during the evacuation beforehand.

So, the day after the attack was weirdly normal. The capes who went to Brockton Bay for the fight had left, and the civilians who had evacuated were returning, but otherwise it was like any other day.

Trickster and the rest of the Travelers were in the section of Coil's base he'd put them in, waiting. Waiting for answers, waiting for a job, whatever.

More immediately, they were trying to set up a TV. Possibly this was inadvisable in an underground bunker, but did they care? No. It said a lot, however, that with four people they were still struggling.

Trickster looked up at the sound of the door opening, because he was sure all of his people were already in the room, so it had to be Coil.

It wasn't Coil.

A young woman walked into the room, as casually as if she was in her own home and not a villain's secret underground base. Trickster stared blankly for several seconds before registering the costume she was wearing. It was Auspice, the hero who'd taken down two Endbringers and a number of S-class threats.

"Shit!" he yelled, scrambling backwards. "Get back!"

There was another exit, wasn't there? Would Noelle fit? Trickster didn't remember. Whether it was a result of Trickster's reaction or because they had also recognized Auspice, the rest of the Travelers got ready for combat.

Shit, shit, shit, Trickster thought. Genesis wasn't ready yet, and it would be a while before one of her creations was finished. Sundancer couldn't use her power in such a confined space without killing the rest of them. They couldn't have Noelle fight, Oliver couldn't fight, and Trickster had hardly anything to switch around. Leaving Ballistic as their only option.

Auspice looked exasperated. "Don't be like that. I'm actually here to help you," she said.

...What.

"...What," Trickster said.

Before Trickster could decide if he wanted to remind the crazy powerful hero that they were villains, Auspice strode forward, right into the middle of them, patted Ballistic on the shoulder, and continued on, towards Noelle.

"Wait, don't touch her!" Trickster said, filled with horrifying visions of crazy, evil versions of a person who could easily destroy an Endbringer.

But Auspice ignored him. Noelle reared away, but she was already in the corner of the room, leaving her nowhere to go. As Auspice's hand reached out, Trickster panicked and switched Auspice with Oliver, who yelped and flinched away from Noelle. Auspice was now next to Trickster, and she turned to give him the most unimpressed look somebody could convey with only the bottom half of their face.

"Seriously?" she said.

And then, almost before Trickster could blink, Auspice was in the corner with Noelle again, one hand against her side.

"No!" Trickster shouted, echoed by various members of the Travelers.

For a long moment, nothing happened. Time stretched onwards as they expected a mutated clone of the most powerful parahuman to grow out of Noelle.

Then, something happened.

Noelle screamed, high and piercing and agonized, as her flesh began to bubble away.

"Noelle!" Trickster switched himself with Oliver, but was unable to do anything but hover uselessly.

"Oh, oops," Auspice said, barely audible over Noelle's screaming, and Noelle fell silent.

She gasped for breath, awake but evidently no longer in pain, even as her bottom half continued to dissolve. Trickster watched in horror. Nobody spoke. Before long, Noelle's monstrous bottom half was entirely gone, leaving… normal, human legs in its place. Noelle looked perfectly normal.

Noelle only managed to stand for a couple of seconds before collapsing abruptly. Trickster lunged forward to catch her instinctively, then remembered himself and forced himself to stop, allowing Noelle to fall to the ground. Noelle didn't even seem to notice, occupied with staring at her own legs in amazement. Her very… naked... legs.

"There we go," Auspice said, sounding pleased. "You can touch her now, there's no threat of evil clones anymore. Sorry about the pain, by the way. I didn't - well, I should have expected it to be painful."

Trickster fell to his knees beside Noelle, removing his jacket hastily and draping it over her lap. "What did you do?" he asked Auspice, but couldn't bring himself to fully look away from Noelle.

"I got rid of her power," Auspice said nonchalantly.

"You what?" Sundancer said.

"Is that possible?" Oliver said.

Auspice shrugged. "It's possible for me," she said. "Like I said, there shouldn't be any problems with people touching her now."

Trickster met Noelle's eyes, wide with hope. He put one hand on his pistol, and with the other, took Noelle's hand gently in his. Nothing happened. Noelle let out a sob and threw herself at him, and Trickster gathered her up in his arms. After so long…

Auspice turned and walked away, leaving Trickster and Noelle with some semblance of privacy.

"Hey, do you want me to make it so you can walk?" Auspice asked.

"What- you can do that?" Genesis said.

"Well, yeah. Of course," Auspice said, a smile audible in her voice. "I wouldn't have offered otherwise."

"I -" Genesis stammered. "Yes? Yes. Please."

"Okay," Auspice said.

Trickster turned enough to watch, relaxing his grip on Noelle enough that she could see too. It all happened very quickly. Auspice touched Genesis' hand, Genesis gasped, and then her legs visibly grew larger as muscles returned. Within seconds, Genesis was throwing the blanket off her lap and struggling to her feet. Alarmed, Sundancer and Oliver moved to help support her, but it wasn't necessary; thanks to whatever Auspice had done, Genesis was only a little wobbly.

While Genesis was still gaping, silent and astonished, Auspice stepped back and put her hands on her hips.

"All right. Now," she said, and Trickster braced himself for the other shoe to fall. "You guys have been trying to get back to Earth Aleph, right?"

A moment of silence.

"...That's right," Trickster said cautiously.

"Well then, it's your lucky day," Auspice said.

Trickster looked from Genesis to Noelle, still in his arms, and thought that it was already the luckiest day they'd had since the Simurgh attack, but he didn't interrupt.

Auspice gestured towards a wall, directing everyone's attention to it just as the air shimmered and formed the image of the outskirts of Brockton Bay, edged in golden light.

...A portal?

"This leads to Earth Aleph, a little outside of Brockton Bay 'cause I have no idea where else to put you. I'm sure you can find your way from there." Auspice said it very casually, as though it was no big deal to make a portal between worlds. As though she hadn't just shown up and decided to help a bunch of strangers to a massive extent for no reason.

Trickster swallowed hard. He dragged his eyes off the portal to look at Auspice.

"How do we know that's where it actually leads?" he asked. "Why should we trust you?"

Auspice laughed suddenly, making everyone jump a little. "Let me be clear. I don't care if you trust me or not. But the thing is, I don't need to trick you. If I wanted to arrest you, or kill you and hide the evidence, or teleport you somewhere awful, or whatever, I could just do it directly," she said with shameless confidence. "I'm being nice and giving you a choice. I'll stick around for thirty minutes, and then I'm closing my portal and leaving. You have that long to decide and pack."

With that, she went to lean against the wall next to her portal and pulled out a phone.

The Travelers had a very short, heated conversation, and got to packing. Twelve minutes later, they were ready to go. Trickster stopped in front of Auspice, holding a bag in one hand and Noelle's hand in the other.

"Thank you," he said seriously. Even if the portal turned out to be a fake or a trap, she had still fixed Noelle.

Auspice looked up from her phone. "You're welcome," she said simply. "Now get out of my city."

Trickster gave an obnoxious, over the top bow. "As you wish."

With one last glance around at his friends, Trickster stepped through the portal home.

June 6, 2011

Emily Piggot

There was a knock on Emily's door.

"Enter," she said.

The door swung open and Auspice strolled in, looking very casual and not at all as though she'd just been a state away destroying a city.

"Hi, Director," she said.

"Auspice." Emily inclined her head. "It's done?"

"Yes. Ellisburg is gone and Nilbog is dead," Auspice said. Emily let out a breath. "You'll probably get official notice soon, but I figured you'd want to know immediately. Also, I have the video you requested."

She set a USB on Emily's desk.

"Good," Emily said to the first part. As for the second… Reluctantly, Emily added, "Thank you."

Capes, even the ones that did record their actions, rarely shared those videos with others - fools like Uber and Leet being obvious exceptions. Emily wasn't a direct part of the operation and the PRT itself had no particular interest in a video of Ellisburg's destruction. As such, it was as a personal favor to Emily that Auspice had recorded her destruction of that detestable city and shared the recording with her.

Emily hated the thought of personally owing a parahuman anything, but she also had a vested interest in seeing Ellisburg destroyed.

Auspice smiled. "You're welcome," she said lightly.

It almost sounded like she meant it, and wasn't planning on holding this over Emily's head in the future. Emily didn't believe it. Everybody, especially parahumans, had their own motive.

"Anyway, if that's all, I'll take my leave," Auspice said.

"Yes, you're dismissed," Emily said, waving a hand at her briskly.

Auspice seemed as amused as ever when Emily said that - it probably seemed like a joke to her for anyone to act like they could order her around - but she just nodded and walked out.

Thus left alone, Emily sat there for a moment. She had work to do. She always had more work to do. But none of her work was terribly urgent, and the video likely wasn't that long. Giving in to her impatience, Emily plugged the USB into her computer and pulled up the lone video file it had on it.

The video was two minutes long. Emily pushed play, and the video began, showing a view of Ellisburg from the sky. There was a small figure, barely visible in the video, that must have been Auspice herself flying down into the city. A second, smaller video popped up in the top corner of the main video, showing the city getting bigger as the camera descended into it. Video from the figure heading into the city, Emily assumed, and wondered how Auspice had managed to get two different views.

Nilbog's monstrous creations soon became clear. Auspice flew through the city apparently uncaring as the grotesque creatures noticed and tracked her. The main, distant view still showed next to nothing. Before long, she came upon a throne made of flesh, and sitting on it was Nilbog himself. There was no audio, so Emily couldn't tell if the two parahumans had spoken to each other.

Without warning, the close up video lit up with gold light so bright it made it impossible to see anything from that camera. The distant view showed a massive, swirling storm of gold fire engulf the area around Auspice and Nilbog.

Within seconds, no trace remained of Nilbog, the nearby creatures of his army, or the nearby buildings. The near view, now useless, disappeared as Auspice set off through the rest of the city. In another minute, before Nilbog's remaining minions could even try to do anything, the city was gone. The video went just long enough to show Auspice turning her power off, fire and ash alike disappearing as though they had never existed, then ended.

Emily might have had some complaints about Auspice's conduct, but she certainly couldn't argue against the results.

Seeing nothing but a barren field where Ellisburg had once stood was, Emily had to admit, very satisfying.

July 26, 2011

Legend

By the time of Behemoth's appearance, four months after the Simurgh's death, everybody seemed to understand how it worked. The PRT sent out their warning, the Truce went into effect, the Endbringer sirens went off. But nobody really expected much.

They evacuated the city of New Delhi. Though evacuating Brockton Bay for the Leviathan battle had turned out to be unnecessary, Behemoth would be coming up from underground, making it next to impossible for Auspice to take him out ahead of time without causing significant damage herself. They would have to wait until Behemoth surfaced, then have Auspice kill him.

Possibly because of that, or maybe because two Endbringers had already been killed and people were less impressed, they got less turnout for the battle than they had in years, which was truly saying something, especially considering that many of those battles hadn't been predicted ahead of time. Many Indian capes had arrived already, and most of the usual Protectorate capes were in attendance, as were Dragon and Narwhal. However, during the Leviathan fight, many villains had taken the opportunity of having the heroes out of the city to commit crimes, ignoring the Truce where necessary in the process. As such, the Protectorate had decided ahead of time to leave many capes who would otherwise go to the battle in their home city to deal with potential crime.

Between that and a near total lack of villains from outside the country, there were shockingly few capes at the battle. If it were an ordinary battle, that would be terrible.

It wasn't an ordinary battle.

Still, for the last time, Legend went through the motions. He did all of the things he usually did before an Endbringer battle, knowing full well that his motivational speech fell flat under the knowledge that Auspice would likely kill Behemoth by herself. They distributed armbands even though nobody expected them to be necessary. Auspice looked particularly amused as she put hers on.

And then they waited.

There was no good place to wait for Behemoth to attack, not for the people who couldn't fly. Auspice had told Legend, Eidolon, and Alexandria previously that it didn't matter where they had everyone stand; with an almost entirely empty city, Behemoth would come up wherever the people were, regardless of exactly where that was.

So instead, they prepared for that, with Brutes and fliers and shielders all ready to act as soon as Behemoth began surfacing. Everybody who couldn't either fly or survive Behemoth's kill zone was moved outside the city. Theoretically, in the event that there was a real battle, they would be moved back in to assist later. And then, they had few enough people remaining that they actually had enough ways to get everybody into the air, and everybody knew that their first move was to get out of Auspice's way to Behemoth.

Auspice herself was already high in the air, well outside of any of Behemoth's ranges. She wasn't actually in any danger regardless, Legend knew, but she had been hiding the fact that she was anything but a Blaster from the majority of people, and so it made sense for her to be very careful about her safety.

Legend and the rest of the people commonly referred to as 'flying artillery', the ones who couldn't survive Behemoth's kill zone to help people on the ground, were also high in the air, far enough away from Auspice to make sure they didn't get in her way. The fliers who could survive the kill zone were hovering near the ground, ready to spirit away one or more of the people who couldn't fly.

Dragon, with her sensors, was able to warn them when Behemoth was approaching.

"Get ready!" Legend said.

Everyone tensed. They would have to act quickly, once Behemoth surfaced, to avoid any deaths. Auspice had told them, those who knew her full power, that everything would go fine. It wasn't that Legend didn't believe her, he was just concerned regardless.

"It's almost time!" Dragon called.

Behemoth burst from the ground with a spray of dirt, rock, and lava. The assembled capes acted quickly, fleeing and ferrying others out of the immediate area. In seconds, there was a clear area around Behemoth, and it was clear for Auspice to attack.

Everyone held their breath. Auspice had managed to kill the other two Endbringers with little trouble, but Behemoth was the most durable of them. If any of the Endbringers was going to be able to withstand her attack, it would be Behemoth. When Legend had asked Auspice about it before, she had acted wounded at his lack of faith in her, then assured him that it would not be an issue. Still, Behemoth had been causing trouble and shrugging off damage for close to twenty years. Legend couldn't help but be worried.

It wasn't necessary.

Auspice's golden laser flashed, and the majority of Behemoth's body, along with a fair amount of the torn ground beneath him, was completely erased.

Unlike with the two previous Endbringer deaths, everybody present didn't need any time to process what had happened. There was only minimal shock and confusion. The cheering started up immediately. It was official.

All three Endbringers were dead.

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SmartAlek

Oct 23, 2019

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SmartAlek

SmartAlek

Oct 25, 2019

#298

Epilogue

August 13, 2011

Auspice

A portal appeared in front of Auspice, and she passed through, entering a dark void, with no light or sound, only inky blackness in every direction. She rolled her eyes. It was very dramatic. Overly dramatic, really.

With a thought, Auspice created a glowing orb of energy, illuminating the dark space and revealing a semicircle of massive, alien monsters of varying shapes and sizes, each directly out of a particularly creative horror movie. Auspice would have flinched if she hadn't been expecting it; even so, each one was uniquely awful in a way she hadn't expected.

They were, of course, the seventeen remaining Endbringers, dormant and sealed away in one of the Thinker's pocket dimensions. After she'd gotten Eidolon's power, Auspice had deactivated them so that no more of them would appear as she killed the first three. Now that they were 'off', and the ability to turn them on surreptitiously removed from Eidolon's power, Auspice could theoretically just leave them alone. However, Auspice did not intend to be that wizard from a fantasy story who sealed away the great evil 'permanently', inevitably forcing later generations to have to deal with it.

Anyway, there was no reason not to kill them, either.

Auspice made sure she had all of their powers, then made seventeen lasers, each carefully calculated to destroy one of the Endbringer's cores. Dormant as they were, the poor things never even got the chance to fight back.

And with that, all twenty Endbringers were dead.

Auspice hadn't been entirely sure what to do about the Endbringers. As far as she could tell, they weren't even shard based, which really made her question what Eden had been doing. Presumably, she had been carrying them around to experiment on or with, but Auspice honestly didn't know. She had been able to keep them dormant and keep them from escaping the pocket dimension as the first three had done, but whatever they were and whatever Eden had been using them for, none of the powers Auspice had copied gave her great enough control over them to be comfortable leaving them alive.

Now they weren't an issue either way, though, so it was fine.

Another portal, and Auspice was back in her apartment. Now that the Endbringers would no longer be an issue, she ran through her mental checklist again. Scion, handled. The Endbringers, handled. The Slaughterhouse Nine. Ash Beast. The Teeth. The Fallen. Heartbreaker and (most of) his spawn. The Dragonslayers. Eagleton, Ellisburg, and (more carefully) the other quarantined cities in the U.S. The Travelers, who she totally hadn't forgotten (and it was fine, she handled them in time either way). Coil, for what that mattered. Same with Lung. She'd helped undo what Cauldron did to the Case 53s. She'd even (indirectly) helped with Taylor's bullying problem, although it hadn't kept Taylor from becoming a cape.

Just to make sure everything would be fine, she'd even taken over both Scion's shard network and the remnants of Eden's, though they were unnecessary to her, since her powers were non-shard based. With some extensive remodeling, the networks didn't even need constant maintenance anymore; they would keep working correctly once she left.

She even had a solution for when more Entities showed up on Earth. She'd added copies of Blank to the shard network so that every parahuman would have it, tweaked so that it wouldn't work on her or the other Scion and Eden shards. That made it unnoticeable and effectively pointless, until more Entities showed up and couldn't use their Thinker powers on any parahuman. And, of course, Scion's and Eden's shards were now hers, so the other Entities wouldn't be able to steal them away. It wouldn't make for an easy fight for humanity, but it would be a possible one.

So there. That was everything.

All of the things Auspice felt necessary for her to interfere in, anyway; the Elite were still a thing, and there were plenty of other gangs, but none that was a very big deal. Everything would go fine without her interference.

Auspice was done. She had successfully Improved Worm. The big disasters had been handled. Things would actually get better - her abundance of Thinker powers assured her of that.

She could go home.

She changed out of her costume, into the very same T-shirt and jeans she'd been wearing when she first ended up in the universe. After a little over half a year of superpowers and considerably more activity than she'd gotten previously, the clothes didn't fit very well anymore. She instinctively stowed her costume in a pocket dimension - Circus' power was so useful - then stopped to think. After a moment, she went and added a few other articles of clothing to the same storage - cape memorabilia, which she wouldn't be able to get again if she didn't take it with her. All of her tinkertech - both made personally and from other people - was already in her pocket dimension.

That was everything she wanted to bring with her.

She brought up the dialogue box she'd been ignoring ever since she killed Scion.

Congratulations! With the defeat of Scion, your primary win condition is complete! Would you like to return home?

Return - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Later

Things had ended up going a little out of order. Killing Scion definitely was not the end of everything she'd wanted to do. Now she was done, though.

She glanced around one last time. She literally had perfect memory, so it wasn't like she was forgetting anything. Although, even with her near-godlike power, she still had the inexplicable feeling that she was forgetting something, like her keys. But no; she'd done everything she wanted to do. She had everything that she wanted to keep.

This was the end. Of the first part of her story, anyway. She smiled. Having power manipulator in Worm was great - but having all of the powers she'd collected, back in her original universe? That was going to be amazing.

Return.


	6. dreadful

#1

T

R U L E

F R O M

' S

G

or, how Joffrey Baratheon imported totalitarianism to Westeros

This thread started out on . The first five updates were shit, so I've fast-forwarded straight to the meat of the story. Might introduce the shitty first five later on, when there's a lull in the story. About a month passes in between each chapter- they're not continuous, one-after-the-other snips. There's a thought.

Initial introductory chapter removed on suggestion.

Last edited: Oct 5, 2017

Support Staff (MCU AU)

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Neptune1

Oct 1, 2017

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Disturbingly obsessed with Nilbog

Oct 1, 2017

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#5

I was sorely tempted to make like one of those divers you see in the Olympics and jump from the window, but you know how we Singaporeans are, we're risk-averse. And death was an unpleasant experience that I'd rather not repeat. Why, I didn't even know if this was a one-off or a two-off or even a three-off- there were no numbers hovering above my head or blazing on my forearm to tell me how many lives I had left.

Also, I was a pussy.

"Good day," I told Clegane. "Tell the servants that all the water I use from now on has to be boiled." After a beat, I added, "Please."

Clegane raised a burnt eyebrow.

"New nameday, new habits."

Clegane snorted and lurched off to the kitchens. I shut the door behind me and attempted to plot. There was an awful lot of words and ideas swirling around in my head. I wondered what I should do.

...hmm. Maybe I should jump off again, to see what sort of ideas would come to me in the blackness.

...nah, too risky.

Clegane went down again and came up with a cup of hot water. I drank two mouthfuls, splashed some of it on my face, and the rest I gargled and spat onto the cold stone. Clegane raised another eyebrow.

"Oral hygiene."

Another eyebrow. Clegane rarely spoke, but his eyebrows were very expressive. I wonder if Martin had included that in the series.

Back at the tourney. Through the dark arts of asking politely and using my elbows to dastardly effect, I found myself sitting beside Baelish. Funny how he seemed less scary when he had nothing to hold over my head, eh? Same for Varys. Same for Uncle Renly; and, by the way, his proclivities were blindingly obvious once you knew what to look out for. I exhaled softly and fondled the wooden armrests on my chair. I figured I'd do a bit less uplifting this time around; I'd try to find the little things in life that made it worth living. The sun in the sky, the scent of perfume on the wind, pretty servants, pretty ladies…

"Hah! Show the fucker!"

And my father. Joy.

I'd avoided him all the while, in my previous life. He tolerated my presence; I think the cat incident was still fresh in his mind. Once it had faded, perhaps I could lure him out from his stupor by proposing a father-son bonding trip. Hunting, perhaps, or touring the Crownlands. I needed to get out of King's Landing; for all its potential, the city could be awfully claustrophobic.

Somewhere on the tourney grounds, a warhammer flashed.

I blinked, slowly, and waited for the churning in the pit of my stomach to subside.

"So, Lord Baelish," I asked, casually, swilling the wine in my goblet, "how do you make so much money?"

"Shrewd investments," Baelish replied, equally casually, "and prudence." He sighed theatrically- perhaps he considered this query a brief display of curiosity from the boorish, brutal Crown Prince. "The Crown spends altogether too much."

"Oh, I agree completely."

"You do? Interesting."

I'd like to think it was a companionable silence, but Baelish had effectively dismissed me. Well, fair enough; I was young and green. Baelish didn't strike me as the sort of person to trust anyone, and he had good reason not to do so, anyway. I settled into my chair and watched men in suits of armour batter each other in the scorching sun. Time was all I had.

"Seven bless you, Prince Joffrey!"

"Long live!"

"Joffrey!"

"Joffrey!"

"Joffrey!"

Nothing I hadn't heard already. I squinted, tilted my head, and put my hand to my mouth. "You!" I shouted.

Roys jerked. "You! Roys!"

Roys gave me a startled, slightly terrified look. "I've been watching you for some time, Roys! You're a talented young man; King's Landing has nurtured your skills. I'm here to make your acquaintance, Roys!"

A roar went up. The Prince on his horse, doling out food from the tourney to the crowd with his red-cloaks, singling out a young man from the teeming masses? Almost a tale fit for the songs. I could see a dozen flinty stares as Roys advanced timidly through the crowd (doubtless envious, ambitious young men who saw an opportunity for advancement); I gripped his forearm and directed him to one of the red-cloaks. "Hop on, my friend," I murmured to him, "and tell your father you shall return as the sun sets. He has nothing to fear."

He'd have nothing to fear, all right. Tomorrow, I'd drop by Roys' family hovel and string his father up for beating his wife and family. All part of the plan; I'd done that in my other life, too. Defending the smallfolk and whatnot. His sister was fetching enough, anyway.

...why was I still a virgin after spending a couple of months in King's Landing? Must've been the smell.

I repeated the process with the other nine boys whom I'd recruited at random in my past life (wasn't so random now, not when I knew all about them and could feign familiarity convincingly). I knew enough about them from long conversations in the training yard… ah, right. Qyburn. Well, this time I knew he'd already taken up residence with the Brave Companions. But what was the point of fetching the man? Well, I wanted my own pet maester, unlike Pycelle, who had his own duties as Grand Maester. I needed someone to teach these illiterate smallfolk, the burgeoning seeds of my grand, continent-spanning bureaucracy.

I turned to look at the Great Sept of Baelor.

Well, if the maesters weren't at my disposal, the Faith was. I could pull off a Baelor the Blessed fairly convincingly. Hadn't tried it before, but I was fairly confident it'd work.

I shoved the hatch aside and emerged into the sunset. The ten boys- I'd started referring to them in my head as the Decade (sounded awfully pretentious, but it was less clunky)- clambered up soon after, blinking hard and opening and closing their mouths as they took in the view.

"See that?" I pointed. "The Blackwater. Just outside the city limits. If only it were within! Then I'd be able to use the water for all sorts of purposes."

I spent some time talking vaguely about my plans. Far above the city, above the peasant rabble, the Decade listened to me raptly. They were lapping it all up. The Red Keep was elevated some distance above the rest of King's Landing; it provided a sort of geographical divide, a tangible, physical separation between the great and good of the Crownlands and the hoi polloi below. Now ten members of the hoi polloi had been brought to the centre of power in all Westeros- physically and economically elevated. One would have to be extraordinarily humble for the honour not to go to their head. I hoped they were susceptible to my entreaties.

"...and the smallfolk, of course, the smallfolk- I have plans for so many of you! There are more boys like you, boys with talent and ambition. I would raise all of you up- teach you to read and write- we need more boys like you, smarter and sharper." I cultivated the impression of importance- as though I was bringing them into grave matters concerning the Realm with a capital R.

"...tell your friends, your family. The smallfolk in King's Landing. No more will you be abandoned and trod underfoot by the nobility who rampage through the city. I'll stand up for you."

Put that way, it was hard to disagree. Renly fulfilled his capacity as Master of Laws, of course, but the multitude of little indignities that King's Landing suffered daily were beneath his notice- he'd probably inflicted a few of those little indignities himself, too. In any case, I made sure to remain vague.

We headed down soon after. Clegane spent an hour beating the crap out of us, and then I ferried them out of the Red Keep to cheers and dumped them back at home. Winked at Roys before leaving. I'd be back the following day.

"Tommen! Tommen, come over."

Tommen gulped. He took one step forward, looked at the kitten in his arms, then at Joffrey, and set the kitten carefully on the ground.

Joffrey had stripped to his waist. Sweat glistened on his back as he rested on the handle of his great hammer. The ten other boys who accompanied him everywhere swung hammers of equal size at large pieces of stone fished from the seaside. There were a few large tubs of an odd grey slurry- he glanced at it, nervously, as he passed. Would Joffrey drop him into one of them? Tommen looked over his shoulder; Mother was facing the sea, eyes closed. She looked oddly relaxed; and then the moment was broken. Uncle Jaime put a hand on her shoulder.

"Tommen, take this."

It was a glob of that grey stuff. Tommen turned it to and fro in his hands, entranced by the thing. One of the boys whispered to Joffrey, "He's just like my little brother." Joffrey smiled.

"Go on, Tommen, run along. You can shape it however you want- just make sure not to leave it under the sun for too long. It tends to harden if you leave it to bake."

Tommen glanced at Joffrey, stuttered out a word of thanks, and ran back to his mother. The Iron Gate loomed behind them; Joffrey turned back to his lieutenants and gathered them close.

"With these, I can rebuild King's Landing. Starting with your houses. Spread the word. Tell your friends. If we can make sure it's stable enough, we could change the face of the city and make sure that King's Landing never burns forevermore."

He proffered his hand, palm down. Vance laid his hand on top of Joffrey's; then Roys and Qarl and Vardis and Klamm and Penten and Lemnos and Will and Trastam and Mall. "Glory be to King's Landing," they intoned, and pulled away.

"This is the contraption?"

"It is, milord."

The Prince surveyed his face with a squint. "I thought Tobho Mott was doing the forging."

"He was. I just put the finishing touches on, milord."

"Don't call me 'milord'; it's off-putting. What's your name?"

"Gendry, m-"

"Call me Prince Joffrey. Or Joffrey, if you should wish to be impudent."

"Wouldn't dream of it, Prince Joffrey."

The Prince laughed. It was a high, clear sound, rather like the sound of bells ringing. He stuffed two silver stags in Gendry's palm. "You're a good lad, Gendry. Have a wonderful day." He placed the smooth iron balls and odd machine in his basket. "D'you know what this machine is called, Gendry?"

"I don't know, Prince Joffrey."

"Me neither. I'm thinking 'musket'. Ring a bell?"

"No, Prince Joffrey."

"Excellent." The Prince paused, face thoughtful, and reached over to pat Gendry on the shoulder. "Good day to you, Gendry. You're a good man."

The Prince was certainly more pleasant than he'd been a few moons ago. A few moons ago, he'd sent one of the apprentices tumbling into the mud with a kick. He'd laughed. But now- on his nameday, he'd just gone and started throwing food to the smallfolk. And he brought Roys and a few other boys into the Red Keep with him. Roys didn't speak to Gendry much, these days; he'd moved on to greater things. Gendry turned back to his work. He ignored the sound of laughter and hammering coming from Roys' smithy, which had become the centre of the Street of Steel since Roys' father had been sentenced to death by the Master of Laws.

Support Staff (MCU AU)

It's Chins All The Way Down (Don Carlos SI)

Grunnings Drills, Inc. (Harry Potter AU)

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Neptune1

Oct 1, 2017

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Disturbingly obsessed with Nilbog

Oct 2, 2017

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#8

"If I were queen, the first thing I would do would be to kill all those grey rats. They scurry everywhere, living on the leavings of the lords, chittering to one another, whispering in the ears of their masters. But who are the masters and who are the servants, truly? Every great lord has his maester, every lesser lord aspires to one. If you do not have a maester, it is taken to mean that you are of little consequence. The grey rats read and write our letters, even for such lords as cannot read themselves, and who can say for a certainty that they are not twisting the words for their own ends? What good are they, I ask you?"

"They heal," said Theon. It seemed to be expected of him.

"They heal, yes. I never said they were not subtle. They tend to us when we are sick and injured, or distraught over the illness of a parent or a child. Whenever we are weakest and most vulnerable, there they are. Sometimes they heal us, and we are duly grateful. When they fail, they console us in our grief, and we are grateful for that as well. Out of gratitude we give them a place beneath our roof and make them privy to all our shames and secrets, a part of every council. And before too long, the ruler has become the ruled.

"That was how it was with Lord Rickard Stark. Maester Walys was his grey rat's name. And isn't it clever how the maesters go by only one name, even those who had two when they first arrived at the Citadel? That way we cannot know who they truly are or where they come from … but if you are dogged enough, you can still find out. Before he forged his chain, Maester Walys had been known as Walys Flowers. Flowers, Hill, Rivers, Snow … we give such names to baseborn children to mark them for what they are, but they are always quick to shed them. Walys Flowers had a Hightower girl for a mother … and an archmaester of the Citadel for a father, it was rumored. The grey rats are not as chaste as they would have us believe. Oldtown maesters are the worst of all. Once he forged his chain, his secret father and his friends wasted no time dispatching him to Winterfell to fill Lord Rickard's ears with poisoned words as sweet as honey."

"Fascinating," Pycelle harrumphed, as he examined the wet glob of concrete. His bushy eyebrows frowned at the grey block on his desk. "And you say it cools."

"It does," I agreed, "but I'm not sure if it's suited for building."

"Why would you want to rebuild King's Landing?" Pycelle queried. "There's little wrong with it, and what is wrong with it cannot be so easily fixed." He harrumphed again. "It costs coin, and-"

"I'll let the smallfolk know how to make it. It's easy enough, after all. Sand and gravel and water. If they want to improve their own housing, they'll build their own houses."

Pycelle chortled. "Not so easy, Prince Joffrey. It might not be stable." His chambers at the Red Keep were fairly large- I'd glanced around a few times when I'd entered, in hopes of locating the book. I wanted to be able to get to it before he did. Before Arryn and Stannis got to it. Asking for the book would be signalling interest; I wanted to be able to pluck it from the pile and whisk it away.

"I know. That's why I'd like to ask for your help to make it more stable."

"I'm busy," Pycelle began, and frowned when my face went flat, "but I shall send for maesters from the Citadel. Spare maesters. Maesters who won't be missed. With talents in this field." He meant defrocked maesters, or the closest equivalent; maesters like Qyburn, except non-outlaws. He coughed, lightly, and I had the sense that my time with him was over. "Anything else?"

"Actually, yes," I told him, politely. "I've been looking for a book by Maester Malleon. Something about genealogies."

"Oh, genealogies! Yes." Pycelle rose to his feet and tottered to the piles of books littering his chambers. The very same chamber had been home to at least a dozen Grand Maesters over the years; Pycelle had been here since Aerys II, and it showed. He kicked aside a few books and emerged triumphantly with a thick, leather-bound tome. "This is the only copy I have," he wheezed, and placed it in my hands. "Guard it well."

"I will," I promised. "Wait, the only copy?"

"Why, the other copy is in the Citadel! Such that his knowledge not go to waste, should the book be lost." Pycelle's eyes glinted. He probably knew why I was borrowing the book, and it wasn't to read it.

"Where in the Citadel, exactly…?"

"Private vaults of the Archmaesters. We keep records, you know," and with a twinkle in his eye and a tap of his wizened temple, Pycelle made his way to the door and held it open for me. "Off you go, Prince Joffrey."

"My thanks, Grand Maester."

There were plenty of other books on bloodlines in Pycelle's library, or indeed in the libraries across King's Landing. But none like Malleon's; the man had been like a bloodhound, seeking out the oldest, crumbling tomes and obtaining true-to-life physical portraits of the old lords from them. He'd been obsessed with reconstructing history- more so than his colleagues. Rather than just recording deeds- like most history-focused maesters- or even recording the thought processes and numbers behind those deeds- which some peculiar maesters insisted on engaging in- Malleon had gone way deep.

"Nothing else about hair colour in the other genealogies, Arryn," I whispered, as the pages burnt and crumpled. "Eat your heart out."

Once the entire thing was reduced to dust, I took my dagger and sliced the leather into thin strips. Then I tossed the stuff down a latrine.

Waste disposal in King's Landing was truly horrendous. I had no idea where to even begin constructing a sewer system. As Pycelle had said, King's Landing's true problems weren't so easily fixed by a novel mixture of the same old substances.

No, its problems were more of the soul- the same energies that had sapped Fat Bob of his youth and vitality were at work across the city, in Baelish and Varys and Arryn and, yes, my mother. And me, too. Sometimes I really pitied Fat Bob.

And then I got over it and got back to work.

"So, Father," I began, over dinner, "the Dragonpit."

My father choked on his wine. Mother watched dispassionately as he sputtered, eyes burning like embers, before he rounded on me. "What about the Dragonpit?"

"We ought to demolish it."

"What for?"

"It's a remnant of the Targaryens."

Fat Bob's eyes flared again, briefly, before settling into a more manageable stupor. "Never say that word in my presence again. And take that up with the Hand, for fuck's sake." He ignored me for the rest of the meal; I ate my fill, brought my plate outside, and dumped the remainder into a basket. Once the Red Keep was done, I'd go off and make my rounds.

"Prince Joffrey," Arryn muttered, as I stepped out into the cold nighttime air. "You wrote to me about the Dragonpit?"

"Father told me to speak to you. I suppose he didn't know I'd already written?"

"My work is never done," the Hand admitted, softly, and we both laughed. It was rather tentative, that laugh, but I counted it to be progress. I'd been working on warming to Jon Arryn for quite some time- tamping down my bad behaviour, for example, and being extra nice to everyone. Though the latter was rather something I tended to do in general anyway. There was always time to be a dick when I had some real power. "But- yes, the Dragonpit. Gods, I've been so busy that I never once considered that it should be torn down. It's an eyesore."

"I have an idea for a replacement."

"You do," Arryn muttered. "Of course you do. Pycelle told me about your bright idea. Is it connected to that, eh-"

"Concrete," I filled in. "I call it concrete."

"Concrete," he repeated, and nodded. "Is it, then?"

"A short, squat complex made of concrete. For the men of learning who have come to King's Landing, and for the sparrows of the Faith as well." The people about town had started to name the defrocked maesters 'men of learning'; they were clearly below the maesters who moved about in the manses, but they weren't exactly on par with the smallfolk either. And the sparrows- well, true sparrows would protest being given hearth and home, but the vast majority whom I'd spoken to on my strolls through the city felt that they'd be willing to stay put and speak to the smallfolk about my various merits if they were given bed and board and food and whores- the latter on the down-low, of course.

"I understand this 'concrete' is not yet stable," Jon Arryn said, carefully. "I also understand that your friends have been waiting for it to be stable for some time."

"They have other things to occupy them," I said, airily, and started to walk. Arryn kept pace as we moved down the serpentine steps, through the portcullis, and then out the postern. He noticed, and I noticed that he noticed, as the red-cloaks fell in step around us. His men- that is, Arryn's men- rose to their feet and followed us at a distance. My basket bounced beside me. "Pycelle's men of learning are teaching them- and the rest of the smallfolk- to read and write and count."

"I suppose they demand less for their services too," Arryn murmured.

"Just so."

The ten of them were waiting outside. The red-cloaks opened ranks, and I stepped forward, opening the basket. I looked over my shoulder- five servants emerged, each of them with two large baskets. I opened my basket and the Decade took what they needed to supplement their dinner. "Compliments of Prince Joffrey," I told them, grinning, and they echoed my words. "Compliments of Prince Joffrey."

The maids gave them their cargo, one basket each, and I bade them farewell. They raised their hands as they descended to the city, and I raised my hand to them in silence.

Jon Arryn accompanied me back through the postern, back through the portcullis, and stopped outside the Tower of the Hand. "You're trying to get in on the city," he stated. It wasn't a question.

"Varys and Lord Baelish have their networks," I said. "And their networks stretch further afield than I could ever hope to match. I'm just trying to be someone of consequence outside the walls of the Red Keep."

Arryn stood in silence, frowning, staring into my eyes. I blinked a few times and folded my arms. Then I started tapping my foot on the cobblestones.

"I'll give the order to tear down the Dragonpit," he eventually said. "But don't think it's on your account; it's been an eyesore for a while. If you want to leave your mark on the city- there's your mark. Make the most of it."

Funnily enough, Maegor's Holdfast had no secret passages. I'd searched high and low- with Clegane, too- and we'd found nothing. I had wanted to bring in the Decade, but even Mother put her foot down there. They'd made it to the Lower Bailey, and no further.

"You're sure," Uncle Renly finally said.

"No secret passages."

"Huh," he exhaled, as we stepped out into the corridor and made our way downstairs, "I could've sworn there was one. An escape route."

I shrugged.

Uncle Renly really was rather frivolous. As Master of Laws, he was competent at his job, but delegated a lot. I suppose he didn't have a choice, since he couldn't impel his subordinates to do their jobs- Baelish owned the lot. He spent most of his time with Tyrell retainers… and his dear darling Loras, of course.

"So what do you think of my idea?"

"You brought me into the Holdfast to talk about that?" Renly guffawed as we slowed to a stop beside the dry moat. "Gods, and here I thought my brother was boring." He shook his head, the mirth suddenly gone. "No."

"Why not? Just within the city walls-"

"No. I set the laws. I make the judgement. This- this code-" and here Uncle Renly's voice was derisive- "it would strip me of my power. A Master of Laws has to have some power, some freedom to decide judgement. It wouldn't do to be so inflexible."

"We can make allowances," I told him. "If it works within King's Landing, it should work in the Crownlands. If it works in the Crownlands, it should work across Westeros. Imagine," I continued, waxing rhapsodic, "all Westeros obedient to laws set down by you. One man… to whom the whole continent is beholden. From the lowest criminal to the highest noble."

"Get your hands off my- please remove your hands from Lord Renly."

"Sorry," I babbled, and removed my hand from where it had been thrown around Uncle Renly's shoulders. Loras eyed me suspiciously and leaned back against the wall.

"As wonderful as the picture you paint may seem," Renly replied, finally, "do you think the Crownlands would submit to something like that? Just the Crownlands? These are ancient rights and privileges you're trampling on, Joffrey, scattering like so many autumn leaves. You'd have to be constantly on guard against nobles seeking to take their power back. And you'd have to be vicious, too. Even the Crownlands, loyal as they are, would rebel in days."

I watched him go. Another obstacle. Just like Baelish- he'd resisted my suggestions of a more uniform system of measures. That would have doubtless prevented himself and his men from skimming off the top. And Varys- well- he'd resist making his little birds known to the Iron Throne, obviously. But there was no other way to confirm absolute loyalty.

So. Obstacles, obstacles, obstacles. I thought of a queer slanted metal thing in my room. As his head bobbed into the distance, down the serpentine steps, I imagined a smooth metal ball making Uncle Renly's cranium pop like those grapes he loved to eat.

Once you have a hammer, everything else starts to look like a nail.

Now all I had to do was make sure the proto-musket and its proto-gunpowder didn't go off and kill me.

Simple enough. I ran my fingers through my hair and kicked a rock into the dry moat. Frustrating.

This was an EU4 Ironman game, and I was playing as Byzantium.

Support Staff (MCU AU)

It's Chins All The Way Down (Don Carlos SI)

Grunnings Drills, Inc. (Harry Potter AU)

Blog Posts from Westeros (ASOIAF)

Dreadful (ASOIAF SI)

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Neptune1

Oct 2, 2017

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Disturbingly obsessed with Nilbog

Oct 2, 2017

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#10

"A long time ago, a time before time," Horin intoned, his shaggy hair masking his brilliant blue eyes, "there was the Blackwater, and then there was the western shore of the Blackwater, where it runs deep into Westeros itself."

The crowd of children listened with bated breath. They were atop the Hill of Rhaenys- it was known by another name, these days, a name circulated among the smallfolk of the city in conversation and tales. The Hill of Learning. Horin licked his thumb and turned the hastily scribbled-out manuscript that he was balancing precariously on his thigh.

"Then, upon the Blackwater, there landed ships. Large ships made of weirwood."

The First Men, the children murmured in awe, and whispers and giggles spread through the group. Horin chanced a glance to his left- there Flea Bottom lay. Somewhere in that dizzying, putrid labyrinth, Qyburn had occupied a freshly emptied-out hovel and would henceforth begin to work his magic. Horin shivered slightly and blamed it on the wind with a smile. He had no grounds on which to attack Qyburn; had he not been expelled from the Citadel as well, for spreading lies?

"The First Men, yes, Alys." He smiled kindly at one of the girls closer to him. "They landed here- where King's Landing stands now- and here, upon the Hill of Learning, and there- upon the Hill of State-" he pointed at the Red Keep, and the children's heads turned dutifully to gaze in awe, "-and upon the Hill of Faith-" he pointed to the Great Sept of Baelor, "the heroes walked. This was their first port of call- their landing-point upon what we now know today to be Westeros."

There were a few rough-looking men on the edges of the crowd, though they smiled at certain children in the mass of bodies seated before Horin. A maester from one of the manses approached, face twisted- doubtless ready to berate Horin for mangling the truth. You lie, swine! Horin could almost hear his self-important whine. The First Men came across the Arm of Dorne, further south than your foul lies! But one of the rough-looking man put his foot out- at least Horin assumed that was what he'd done- and the maester nearly fell into the crowd of children before being rescued by another man, who whispered a few words into his ear before letting him go, white-faced. Horin smiled to himself.

"There were many heroes, of course, but among them the greatest of all was Durran. Ancestor of the great and good Baratheon Kings who rule with supreme benevolence from the Red Keep."

"Let us thank the Seven for Prince Joffrey and King Robert," one of the sparrows called from the edge, holding an unpolished crystal aloft (it was one of their conceits, appearing desperately poor- Horin had seen that sparrow in one of the most expensive brothels in the city once or twice, in passing). The children closed their eyes and recited their prayers. Horin licked his lips and shuffled his notes and made some half-baked thanks to the Seven.

No one would spit on him again for being cast out from the Citadel. King's Landing was a city of opportunity- that much was clear to him. He could preach his "foul lies" all he wanted, and no one would stop him. If there was one thing Horin knew, it was that there were many different interpretations of the truth. He should know- he'd been peddling many truths for as long as he could remember. And most of the people of King's Landing knew not about the ancient histories, anyway- if Prince Joffrey wanted his ancestors' role in Westeros to be raised up, then who was Horin to argue, when he was getting paid a gold dragon once a moon?

The prayers finished. All eyes turned back to Horin, who harrumphed and ruffled his notes again. "Tell us more about Durran and Lann," one of the children begged. They all looked the same to Horin after a while.

"Right, then," Horin replied, smiling kindly (he'd almost got it down to an art), and continued. "The greatest of these heroes was Durran, but his right hand was Lann. Lann the Clever, the First Men called him, and while Durran was great and strong and good with a sword, it was Lann who would wriggle into the most narrow passes, Lann who had the wit to bargain with the many beasts who would stand in their adventures..."

He'd already written a conclusion to the story- Durran and Lann would settle in Storm's End and Casterly Rock, but they'd return to King's Landing first to swear an oath to fight tyranny. From there, it was easy enough to rewrite all history to cast the Baratheons and Lannisters as loyal allies, the greatest rivals to the Targaryens, held in check only by the harshest brutality. He had ideas for how the Lannisters and Baratheons had persuaded Aegon the Conqueror to establish Lord Paramounts and Wardens. So many ideas!

"The maesters will object," Severin had told the Prince, when he'd spoken of his wishes.

"They have little power in King's Landing," the Prince had replied, green eyes glinting in the dim light, "and once there are enough stories and tales spreading outside of King's Landing, across the Crownlands, across Westeros, your tales will become the truth. They will become folklore, and the smallfolk will cling to your words before they think of the maesters and their Citadel." That was the moment Horin had stepped forward and announced that he would carry out the Prince's wishes.

We will make a second Citadel here, Horin thought to himself giddily. And it will be greater than the Citadel in Oldtown. He blinked, glanced around, and broke into a grin. "Children! Here is the Prince himself!"

Cheers rose up as the children turned to look at the boy standing on the edge of the crowd, clad in a simple black-yellow design. He smiled, winked at Horin, and threw pastries from the Street of Flour into the crowd. Grasping hands rose up to catch them. Horin caught the Prince's eye and was gratified to see him nod in approval.

The iron doors were hacked to pieces in the noonday sun. The Prince delivered a final, earth-shattering blow, and ran the back of his hand over his forehead. "On this day," he shouted, voice cracking as it reached the ears of the assembled labourers, "we cast the final ashes of the dragons away!" Cheers.

"We shall tear down this Dragonpit as we did the Dragons and their foul incestuous tyranny!" Boos at the Targaryens. Wenfors could see faces twisted with rage, spittle flying from their mouths as they cursed the Dragons and the Mad King Aerys. He exchanged glances with Yorick. "Mayhaps we should go off to a tavern instead," he suggested, meekly.

"No, no, hang on," Yorick replied, turning his gaze back to the assemblage, his golden cloak flapping in the slight breeze. "This is interesting, I want to watch."

The Prince held a ragged piece of iron above his head. "On this day," he roared, much like the lion emblazoned on his doublet, "I shall return the Dragonpit to the people! It shall be taken down, and every stone, every scrap, everything used in its making shall be sent back to King's Landing, back to the city that birthed it! The dragons are dead, and the Dragonpit will die as well!"

Roars from the crowd again. The Prince certainly loved giving speeches. The smallfolk were lapping it up.

"He's a fine man," Yorick said, thoughtfully, as they adjourned to the pub and bought themselves a round of fine beer with Baelish's coin. "Me children speak well of him."

As do mine, Wenfors thought, heavily.

His son Penten. One of the Prince's lieutenants. He remembered the day he'd gone on leave, his first in a few moons. He'd gone home and seen that it was grey, a strange sight in a street filled with the mouldy colours of brown and black. Penten had been there, a small dagger in his belt, and the look on his face scared Wenfors.

Your son, your family- they would leave you not out of hate, but out of love, the Prince had told him, in that quiet room, in the presence of Penten and dear Gladys and his infant daughter who had no name then. Renly Baratheon commands you, and Baelish pays you, but they do not know what's best for King's Landing. I do.

There were three kinds of men in the gold-cloaks. There were men like Janos Slynt- men who would choose coin over their wives and family without thinking. He'd cast his sons to the deepest depths of Flea Bottom, where they remained with nary a penny of his vast ill-gotten fortune. Men like him- and there were a lot of them in the gold-cloaks- had given themselves over to Baelish completely and utterly, following Lord Renly's few orders dutifully and with much brutality. They were as covered in filth as Baelish himself. (Wenfors, of course, did not know that Slynt was also in the pay of the Lannisters- but the Crown Prince knew, of course, and arranged for his demise nonetheless. To borrow Matthew 6:24; no one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both Lannister and Littlefinger.)

There were men like Yorick, who was quaffing from his mug happily, who would have nothing to do with Baelish but took his money and provided service if paid for it. They did their jobs well, enjoyed the benefits of their position and thought no more of it.

Then there were men like Wenfors. Men who did their jobs, took Baelish's money and thought no more of it. Except that wasn't true. You couldn't get into the gold-cloaks without Littlefinger's say-so; Wenfors had been conscripted on account of his gambling debts. Littlefinger was pushing him, over the brink, over the line that separated Yorick from Slynt.

But Wenfors loved his family. He was flawed, and he gambled away most of the bribes, but he loved his family, and to see that they had moved on without him- that they'd changed what little they'd have according to the whims of the Crown Prince- and then to have the Crown Prince challenge him, in his own home, to be a better man- that was the last straw.

He would speak to those like him, men on the brink. The Prince would get in touch with their families. The Prince would give them, men like him, an ultimatum. If they chose rightly- good. If they chose wrongly- the Prince would shelter their families from the abandonment of their breadwinners, give them a home, allocate them a place in the rapidly rising concrete housing along the coastal walls. Very few of the men Wenfors had met had chosen wrongly- how could they choose wrong, when it was a choice between blood and gold? And Yorick- well, Wenfors had fought beside Yorick and men like him for some time. He knew Yorick, and Yorick knew him. They were friends. If Wenfors asked for help, Yorick would be loath to deny him help.

There were two factions rising in the gold-cloaks. Wenfors was not stupid enough to be on the wrong side. And if he got a plum posting at the end of it, when all was said and done- well, all the better for him, then.

So here was Wenfors' list of priorities, front and centre in his mind from the moment he opened his mouth. He was a father and a husband first. Then a man in the service of Prince Joffrey. Then a man in Littlefinger's service, and then a man in Renly's service. He would do nothing for Littlefinger unless the Prince said so, and why not? What had Littlefinger done for him apart from bring him to more and more lavish gambling dens, give him more and more money to throw away? He would continue in Littlefinger's service, as well, of course, but he would not permit himself to be weak ever again. Never again. And neither would his family.

"Say, Yorick," Wenfors said, "what do you think of the Prince? Honestly."

I hissed as the knife cut into my palm. It was burning hot- I'd soaked it in hot water, and now the barrel of hot water stood at my side as blood dripped into it. I passed it to Vardis, who repeated the process, and so on around the circle. The fire lit our faces. It was late at night. The red-cloaks stood at a distance, glancing over their shoulders now and then. They knew when to give me privacy.

The ritual was complete; we clasped hands. I'd seen this in It a few days before I was dropped into Westeros; I counted to ten in my head and broke the circle. Then I lined them up in ranks. Each of them received a stick of wood. They dipped it in the fire. I thought of tiki torches, incongruously, and smiled briefly. It did parallel, to a certain extent, what I was about to do.

"In old Andalos," I told them, quietly and heavily, "the men used a certain method to introduce new lords, to announce their arrival, to declare allegiance and signal solidarity. Here, of course, we have lots of flowery words- Lord here, Lady there, Ser again." I snorted derisively, and the Decade aped my example. "There- back then- it was different."

I was offering something different- remember that.

Now, the Nazis- they were brutal, they were vile, they killed and killed and killed- but why would I kill for hatred? I would kill for my own self-interests, and certainly not in as large quantities nor with such deliberate intent as the Nazis. And, anyway, anyone killed would just come back on their side. Winter was coming, after all. Yet they had managed to capture a strange sort of mystique in their rituals and rallies and proclamations.

And, with that little side-note and rationale provided, I was offering the Decade- and King's Landing- something different, something entirely new from the pageantry that they were used to in the tourney grounds. I was offering them something personal, something primal and dark and old. (Rather like how some thought of the North, actually.)

Or maybe I just liked to act like a real nasty piece of work.

"Back then, it was different," I repeated, face lit by the flickering light from the torch that I held aloft. The Dragonpit was at our backs, slowly collapsing as the builders turned it to dust. Below, King's Landing was dotted with little concrete houses, some of them rudimentary apartment buildings as some enterprising souls tried to build cubicles on top of one another with the city walls as a spine. I'd tied the smallfolk of King's Landing to me with kindness; Baelish was more of a tempter, calling to the baser sides of human nature and promising riches beyond imagination. That's why I'd tied the Septons and the sparrows to me; I was the good guy here. Not him. "Back then, well, there were rituals like this. These rituals- like the one we just performed- are a sign of loyalty. After the ritual the warlord would give the signal and say nothing. But the men would- knights and archers and levies all- and they would shout the warlord's name, bereft of fancy titles like Ser or Lord or Lady or even King- and they would copy the signal, the signal of fealty and obedience, and the roar would echo over the grasslands and the woods… and their enemies would tremble. Our enemies." My lips were pulled back, eyes glittering. The Decade- the core of my army, the future of Westeros- looked back. Their eyes were set. What cause had they to stop now?

I held the torch aloft with my left hand. I raised my right arm at an angle, stiff, palm down, fingers together. A salute- to myself. "Heil," I whispered, out the corner of my mouth, and for one brief moment I was terrified that they wouldn't respond.

Then,

"Heil Baratheon! Heil Baratheon! Heil! Heil! Heil!"

The sound echoed from the Hill of Learning- always rename things, it helps to change people's perceptions, gives them a hint of something new- and the red-cloaks gave me a look. I winked at Roys, and he changed the chant.

"Heil Joffrey! Heil Joffrey!"

And the Lannister men held their swords aloft, their shields neatly upon the floor, and added their voice to the chorus. Smallfolk were spilling out onto the streets, gazing up at the assemblage on the hilltop, little pinpricks of light in the darkness. And, one by one, tentatively at first but rapidly increasing in courage as more and more of their fellows picked up the chant, they added their voices. They raised their arms aloft.

"Heil! Heil! Heil!"

The roar echoed from one end of King's Landing to the other, except for the manses, where a few candles guttered out from an unseen wind. I smiled at that- a good omen.

The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. King's Landing might not have known it, but it was binding itself to me. It had shown its allegiance. On the morrow Qyburn would start testing gunpowder manufactured by the Alchemists' Guild on volunteers- effectively giving them a torch and standing back- patching them back together if the resulting explosion was too big. The Street of Silk was already pumping daggers out at a rapid pace, urged on by smallfolk eager to serve as foot soldiers in the new order.

Heil Joffrey Baratheon, Emperor and Autocrat of all Westeros.

Heil me.

"There was a book," Stannis Baratheon growled, the bones of his fist grinding against one another. They were atop the Tower of the Hand, discussing in hushed tones the King's Great Matter. "I know it. There was a book- by a noted Maester. Mall- Mall-something." He sounded bitter, angry, frustrated. "Pycelle told me he'd lost it- lost it. How does one misplace a tome as thick as the man's head?"

Jon Arryn felt the same. "Peace, Lord Stannis," he counselled. "We have the bastards. If we were to present the evidence before the King-" and then he paused.

The ground beneath their feet was shaking.

Jon Arryn set his goblet of wine down on the battlements and squinted into the distance. Atop the Hill of Rhaenys, there was a gathering of torches, visible even from far away. Some brave souls were still up there at this time of night (or was it Jon who was old? he'd stayed up later, once upon a time, back when his bones didn't ache so). And yet Jon Arryn knew that it was Joffrey Baratheon, the Crown Prince, who was up there- for none could doubt his ability to sway the smallfolk. Not since his tenth name-day, and certainly not after tonight, a paltry six moons later.

"You know," Stannis Baratheon said, pensively, and with a bit of a tremor to his voice, after the roar had died down, "I used to think that Prince Joffrey was unworthy. That was what had motivated my investigations. Our investigation is not nearly done, and yet-"

He did not need to say anymore.

Support Staff (MCU AU)

It's Chins All The Way Down (Don Carlos SI)

Grunnings Drills, Inc. (Harry Potter AU)

Blog Posts from Westeros (ASOIAF)

Dreadful (ASOIAF SI)

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51

Neptune1

Oct 2, 2017

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Disturbingly obsessed with Nilbog

Oct 3, 2017

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#13

ZFighter18 said:

No, I need more. And wow, from zero to Hitler in like three chapters. Is that a new record?

My original thread back on had a ramp-up of 5 updates, but those updates were banged out on a coffee high, so they didn't exactly make sense. So I cut them from here. Might include them as a sort of prequel/side-story thing later.

"Off we go," Robert whistled, tunelessly, and Renly exchanged an amused glance with Loras. The only thing that could rouse Robert from his late mornings was a refill of his wineskin or a hunt. Honestly, had Jon Arryn ever stopped treating him like a child? Then again, if Robert didn't want to be treated like a child… mayhaps he had better stop acting like one.

Ser Selmy glanced at him sharply, and Renly had to duck his head to avoid meeting his eyes. The old knight intimidated him, or mayhaps it was just respect at the man's age. He dug his spurs into the horse's flanks. The animal whinnied; shifted forwards.

"Come on, men," Robert shouted, and hiccupped. "Come on, Renly, Ser Loras."

Renly exchanged another amused glance at Loras for the backhanded insult. Then he looked back at the city thoughtfully.

Robert had been spooked by last night's display. Truth be told, Renly had been, too, though he didn't really quite grasp the enormity of the situation. For his part, what he was concerned about was losing the friendship of the smallfolk. His nephew was eclipsing him rapidly- though, from what he caught in passing from his lobster brother and Jon Arryn, there were ways around his current predicament.

Ah, well, Stannis and Arryn could handle themselves. Four members of the Kingsguard were still in the city, and his gold-cloaks had trained longer than some urchins in the city had been alive. His nephew was many things, but stupid he was not… at least, not anymore. The city was gradually settling down, anyway- it was more peaceful, for one thing. Fewer supplicants came to him- only the nobles and the richest merchants, Joffrey's aggrieved smallfolk who'd been slighted (and rightly so) by one highborn or another, and of course those on Baelish's payroll. Not surprising- Baelish's men had always been troublemakers. Mayhaps Joffrey was having a calming effect on King's Landing?

How little he knew.

"I don't trust the pyromancers," Uncle Jaime said, softly, as we wormed our way into Flea Bottom. Last night had certainly been a spectacle for me- it had also been extraordinarily draining. One full minute of chanting and holding a heavy flaming wooden torch aloft had wreaked havoc on my nerves. The smallfolk stood aside, in silence, as we strolled past. The Lannister men had paused on the outskirts- even now, probably, they were milling around and not-so-subtly guarding the perimeter. Flea Bottom was safe. "Men so high in Aerys' esteem are not to be trusted."

I'd eaten one helping of the famed "bowls of brown", to show that I truly cared for the smallfolk. Actually... it wasn't that bad. Sure, it might've contained rats and murder victims, but since Qyburn had set up shop in the bowels of the most bitterly poor section of the city, the quality and sanitation had markedly improved. It was to Qyburn's clinic- and my inner sanctum- that we progressed, now.

I was whistling. The Things We Do for Love. We'd worked it out beforehand, me and the Decade- this tune meant that I was leading the Kingslayer into Flea Bottom. They'd make the necessary preparations.

["The things I do for love" was what Jaime Lannister said in Game of Thrones, S01E01, before pushing Bran Stark out the window. See? I am witty!]

"Regardless, they've performed great services for me," I told him, as Qyburn's clinic came into sight. "We're developing new weapons. Things like you wouldn't believe. Things that'd make the rest of the realm tremble and piss their breeches if they knew of it."

Uncle Jaime looked dubious. "I'd like to see your new weapon defeat my blade," he scoffed.

I could crush your skull like a grape from twenty yards away without you even knowing it, I thought. Don't talk to me about blades, Daddy dearest- blades are obsolete.

I ducked under a sheet of dirty cloth, and Uncle Jaime followed after some hesitation. He'd been down here with me before, to watch me do Renly Baratheon's job for him, the useless pig. Here, it was clean- empty- dry. This was Qyburn's little corner, smack dab in the middle of Flea Bottom. No one would think to look for us here- and if they were to find us, well, the smallfolk of Flea Bottom were the most loyal of the lot. Their lives had improved by leaps and bounds- and it was all because of me.

Qarl nodded at me as he held the door open. "Prince Joffrey."

I took a seat at the end of the hall. There were some scorch marks on the scraped-clean wooden boards, reinforced with metal smuggled from the Dragonpit. Qyburn met my gaze from where he was emerging from a shadowy room; cries echoed from within. Was he conducting experiments, or was he helping to birth a child? It was all the same to me.

"Not quite the Iron Throne," Uncle Jaime remarked, as he laid a hand on the wooden back of my chair.

"It's not the throne that matters," I told him, quietly, "it's the man who sits on it." And then I turned my attention to the supplicants of King's Landing. Above, the sunlight peeked through rags laid from end to end. They'd been dried leathery by the sunlight beating down on them- a rudimentary sort of ceiling, yet with sufficient gaps to let the light and air in.

"Enter," I said.

"Rape," Klamm announced, dragging a man in. He was a Braavosi, I think- flowery clothes, and flamboyant colours, and many earrings. His eyes were filled with fear as Klamm and Will forced him to his knees.

"The victim?"

"She's dead," one of the onlookers choked, his first utterance since he'd entered the chamber (it wasn't really deserving of the name, but whatever worked). "We were to be married." His eyes were red with tears and, I hoped, a bit of anger. "I'm a fishmonger, Prince Joffrey." He met my gaze. "A humble fishmonger. Please be just."

"If I do not return, there will be no more Braavosi ships docking at King's Landing," the Braavosi sneered, though the look in his eye said otherwise. I'd never been put in a position where I'd have to sentence anyone particularly powerful- such as someone of note from the Free Cities. Some crimes had been committed by members of the households maintaining the manses- footmen, for example, and household knights. In such cases, I brought them up to Renly, who processed them accordingly. I think he fancied me his assistant- no. He was my assistant. When he failed to punish Lords and Ladies, I reported the results to the smallfolk and they took their anger out in a more… direct fashion.

"So?" I snapped, flippantly. "Braavos is but one of nine."

His eyes flared, but Klamm and Will were strong, and there were more men on hand to break his kneecaps should it come to that (Qyburn had taught the ruffians of Flea Bottom more than a few things). "You'll regret this," he swore.

"Will I?" I chuckled. "The girl you raped has died. As retribution, you shall die too- but not before adequate punishment is delivered." I rose from my chair, took three large strides across the floor, and delivered a kick to his crotch. As I withdrew, I nodded at the victim's grieving husband, and he, eyes flaming, moved before the Braavosi and started raining kicks and punches down. Uncle Jaime winced.

This was what I did, day after day. Four hours of hearing petitions and meting out justice. Then four hours doing my own thing, with Uncle Jaime at my side.

"Heil! Heil! Heil!"

Petyr Baelish clapped his hands over his ears and glared at Rhaenys' Hill. There the Crown Prince was, again, inducting another group of ten into his little cabal. After a few days, it had almost become mundane.

It was obvious what the Prince was doing to anyone with half a brain. He was endearing himself to the smallfolk, building up to take Petyr down. Well, the smallfolk were weak. His Gold-cloaks- and they were his, not the man-lover Renly's- would strike them down where they stood. He had contacts among the nobility- he knew all of them by name- and a few yet among the upper classes. Sure, some of his gold-cloaks had decided to grow a spine- but it would be a temporary setback, nothing more. One more moon, and he'd be ready to move against the stripling.

The Decade had become the Century, and was quickly becoming the Millennium. One thousand men swearing themselves to me- I was almost giddy with excitement. Or maybe it was the blood loss- I'd cut my palm open once a night. At this rate, I'd eat through Pycelle's linen stores by my next name-day.

Uncle Jaime sat opposite me, eyes hooded. The supplicants had left. The Dragonpit was still being torn down, inch by inch. My Decade- or, at least, half of my Decade- was training about twenty men from the Century in the outer yard of the Red Keep. In the concrete settlements lining the walls, defrocked maesters were preparing the next stage of my plan. I eyed him for a moment and spoke.

"Why did you kill Aerys?"

That caught him off guard. He sputtered for a bit before regaining control. "He- he was mad."

"You're sure?"

"Of course. You know this."

"No other reason?"

His eyes flicked up to mine. Wordlessly, I reached under the table and withdrew a single clay pot. Within was a substance that had more destructive potential than a tonne of gunpowder. Uncle Jaime jerked away. When he finally got himself under control, he spoke.

"How did you know of this?"

"I spoke with the pyromancers," I told him, shrugging. "It wasn't hard to put two and two together. The lead pyromancer, Aerys' Hand? Two others, both fairly senior, dying in the wake of the Sack, in suspicious ways? Aerys must not have been idle in the days immediately preceding his death."

"How many have you found?"

"That's for me to know and you to find out," I smirked, and Uncle Jaime turned purple. He might almost have lunged at me, impulsively, as was his nature, but the clay pot was still between us.

"What do you want?"

He almost seemed resigned. Jaime Lannister, resigned? Never thought I'd see the day.

"I want you to listen to me very carefully," I told him.

There is a tempter at the gates, faithful children of the Seven.

He cloaks his evil in honeyed words, and he offers you all the riches in the world. But do not be taken in! For he is as a dragon, though he take the form of a tiny bird. His eyes are ever mocking, and he- is- everywhere.

Even now his agents crouch in this beautiful, blessed city that we call home, and they are festooned in his filthy wealth! Coin flows through his fingers like water, and those who call themselves wreathed in raiments of gold are covered in this dirty, muddy water- and they smell. Oh, they stink to the seven heavens, to the greatest heights of the Vale!

It is not too late! Repent! Repent! Your hour is close at hand! There will be a great cleansing! Turn away from the tempter, gold-cloaks! Turn away! Turn away!

Sermon of the Sparrow Duram atop the Hill of Faith, six-and-a-quarter moons after Prince Joffrey's tenth nameday

"You're serious. He used the word mocking. Not 'laughing'?"

"No. Mocking. 'He takes the form of a tiny bird that is mocking'."

Petyr had to laugh. "Gods, they're not even being subtle." He was going to take pleasure in grinding the Prince into the dust.

"He also said that there were men within the gold-cloaks who had turned. Er- hinted, more like, but-" the merchant shrugged- "-all the same."

Petyr frowned. That was concerning. He'd have to watch them carefully. Wenfors, for one, and Yorick too. There were others, but Wenfors, according to Slynt, had a son who was one of the Prince's first lieutenants. If he could just get to that son… but the smallfolk were too persistent, too sharp-eyed. And so very loyal.

Well. There would be a reckoning. He'd been in King's Landing since the Prince was in swaddling-clothes; he'd sunk his claws in deep. It would take more than six moons' worth of work to dislodge him.

Tyrion read through the letter. He rubbed his eyes. Then he read through the letter again.

The cypher was a simple enough one, but what he didn't understand was why Jaime wanted him to bring at least a hundred wineskins and a hundred able Lannister men, and then wait in an inn some short distance from King's Landing... for a signal. What signal?

Jaime had seemed excited, though, and it wasn't like Tyrion had anything better to do with his time. He made a note in his calendar and went on with his activities.

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Neptune1

Oct 3, 2017

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Neptune1

Disturbingly obsessed with Nilbog

Oct 4, 2017

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#23

ZecoreZecron said:

Ok, you missed the part where I went completely psychotic there for a few minutes because this line here pissed me off so much that I literally could not type coherently.

I rarely tell people not to read my stuff since I'm an attention whore, but I'll make an exception in this case, because I've written about 25k words after this little concrete thing, and concrete as a substance will come into play. So, for the sake of your continued cardiovascular health, please don't read on.

"That's a pretty lass," the Prince Joffrey observed, from over his shoulder, and Loras jerked. It would have been a wonderful day- a lazy day in the Red Keep, just him and Renly after his love had finished the numerous boring tasks that came with the "honour" of being Master of Laws- if not for the Prince. Glaring suspiciously at the boy, he shoved Margaery's portrait back into his cloak. Still, the Prince continued to talk. "Why, it's a very nice portrait too. Where did you have it made?"

"Highgarden."

"You have Myrish painters in Highgarden. Why is it that King's Landing always misses out on this sort of thing?" The Prince shook his head slowly and sighed. "Well, if I can't have a Myrish painter, I suppose I could settle for a Tyrell flower."

Loras narrowed his eyes. He wasn't suggesting it, was he? Still, if the Prince favoured men it would make a certain amount of sense- he'd surrounded himself with boys, and-

"Not everyone is like you, Ser Loras," the Prince grinned, and Loras felt his heart leap into his throat. "Such presumption. What would your father say if you were to tell him that you would give him no heirs? What would the King say, if my lord uncle were to reveal himself incapable of carrying on the Baratheon line?" He tutted. "At best, he'd have you exiled. Sent to Dorne to live with the savages and their vile attitudes. At worst..." he mimed a warhammer smashing into a skull. Loras' blood boiled.

"What do you want, Prince?" He tried to keep his voice light, glancing away boredly to the blue skies above, urging the cool breeze blowing over his skin to remove the fear that burned in the pit of his stomach, but he was not entirely successful. Margaery was always better at such things.

"I want a Tyrell flower," Prince Joffrey said, simply. "She catches my eye. I will not, of course, settle for my lady mother being so rudely supplanted, but if I have to suffer for the sake of the dynasty, for the sake of stability-" he shrugged, as though marrying Margaery was an indignity- "then I shall gladly do so."

Loras stared at him. "Are you always such a cunt?"

The Prince exposed his teeth, which were slightly yellowing, and stank of Flea Bottom. Loras recoiled- just a smidgen- but it was enough for the Prince's grin to widen. Then it fell away, and Loras found himself again wondering at the speed with which the Prince changed his face- almost as though his default expression was the flat, featureless face of a simpleton. "I apologize deeply for my insolence," he retorted, not a bit of contrition in his voice, "but the fact remains that I would like you and Lord Renly to co-operate in the moons to come. What, I shall not say- you shall know when the time comes."

Loras hoped so. He watched as the Prince strode away, pulling a sword from the wall and twirling it in his hand as he called to his sworn sword to attend him. After some time, Loras, too, rose from the bench and made for Renly's quarters.

There were better ways- more pleasing, courtly ways- for the Prince to signal his alignment with Tyrell plots, but the Prince had grown both more subtle and more coarse in the days since his name-day. Subtle, in that he had been weaving a web of influence to rival that of the Spider's, and coarse, in that his conversations had grown more brusque, more straightforward- bereft of the empty courtly words that he'd used to speak- and filled with intent.

Nonetheless, he had to tell Renly.

Jaime watched as Trastam and Mall dumped the man unceremoniously on the rotting wooden planks. Joffrey tutted from where he was sitting on the wooden chair, fingers steepled. Uncurling himself, rising to his full height, he took one, two, three deliberate steps and lifted the "defrocked" (it was how he insisted on calling them, and Jaime had to admit that it had a certain ring to it) maester's chin up. In the dim lighting, his hair sparkled golden in the sunlight- he was of a height with most of his lieutenants, who were not short at all, and there were lean muscles that stood out on his arms when he trained, which was twice or thrice every half-moon. He was not, of course, as muscular as Jaime, but that was to be expected. Not on the throne, yet he's already ruling, some part of his mind whispered proudly.

"Let this be a lesson to all of you," Joffrey said, unexpectedly, and a few of the satisfied-looking defrocked maesters and sparrows lining the hall jerked in surprise. "I do not tolerate dissent. I do not tolerate traitors. This man is a traitor and he shall suffer the punishment of a traitor." He held aloft a slim leather-bound volume; Jaime had seen him writing in it in his own chambers. There was a crude sketch of Westeros on the cover. "It is in this book that I have written out the crime and the punishment that should follow. It is this book that I follow. I am not arbitrary."

He had said the same thing to his "Dekad", his "Senturii" and his rapidly growing "Milenium". That, Jaime suspected, was part of the reason why he was so popular with the smallfolk. Sure, Lord Stannis was law-abiding- perhaps even more so than Joffrey- but he never set foot much outside the Red Keep, while Joffrey always made his rounds with food from the castle. He left the walls and spoke to the people in the slums outside. He joked with the merchants by the Blackwater. He'd even ate that revolting brown stew to show that he emphasized with the smallfolk of Flea Bottom.

"That does not mean," Joffrey continued as he rolled up his sleeves, "that I am not going to enjoy this."

He continued talking as he started to beat the man. "Many of you may consider betraying me, but that would be a mistake. Within these walls, make no mistake, I rule. It would be very, very hard to leave King's Landing without me knowing about it. And even harder to spread the wrong rumours." He left unsaid what these wrong rumours might be, though Jaime had a suspicion. Joffrey had proven himself to be very perceptive in recent moons; if he knew about him and Cersei… well, Jaime would not be very surprised.

He did miss Tyrion, though. As the sound of bone breaking filled the silent hall, Jaime reached into his white cloak and fished out the scrap of paper that had come with the raven.

Brother dearest,

I am in position. And eagerly in wait of my dear nephew's cunning ploy. Send for the Laughing Hog.

The end of the note came with a crudely drawn lion's head; if Jaime held it up to the light and tilted his head just right, the lion's head became his father's face, mouth wide open, eyes scrunched up in frustration. It was an expression which he had only dreamed of, and never seen in reality.

If Joffrey's plan didn't call Tywin Lannister to the capital, well, nothing would.

"Heil! Heil! Heil!"

"Hail, hail, hail," Varys hummed along, as the noise reverberated along the walls of the Red Keep. It was almost routine for him- he might set his sleeping and waking to those noises, were it not that he slept and awoke at irregular hours, as was appropriate for a Master of Whispers. He set his quill down and gazed at the uncovered crimson walls- the outermost walls of the Red Keep, the strongest of them all save Maegor's Holdfast.

Flea Bottom was not impenetrable to his little birds, and some of them had managed to sneak in as part of the party of supplicants who regularly swept into the hall to speak to 'King Joffrey of King's Landing'. It was a very… peculiar nickname that the Prince had, to be sure. Who would want to be a king of a single city? Unless one intended to expand one's dominion… but those were purely hypotheticals, of course.

Even then, however, they could not stay for longer than a few heartbeats before they were cast out, his little birds. There was a single solitary room- a space- in Flea Bottom that he had not mapped out, and that was the interior of Qyburn's clinic. He had led a little bird into Qyburn's clinic, ordering it to plead for help, claiming a broken ankle, and report back on what Qyburn did to it.

The little bird had not returned. Neither had the second, third, fourth or fifth. And the sole former maester whom Varys had managed to get in touch with- he had not shown up to their meeting, and then word had gone around that Prince Joffrey had beaten him to death himself, in front of his other functionaries.

That impenetrable space widened, once a day, for four hours, when the Prince's men blocked all access to the hall where the Prince conducted his daily lawgiving. His little birds reported loud noises- explosions- and muffled cries of pain. And, sometimes, the low, soft mumble of the Qyburn was doing in that clinic of his- and Prince Joffrey, by extension- it was something important. And something that was a grave threat to his own influence, and potentially the influence of every other faction in King's Landing… the Lannisters included. He wondered if the boy knew that.

Varys sighed and put on his whiskers- cast off his eunuch's robes and threw on the clothing of a fishmonger. A few turns through the tunnels, he was emerging into the Street of Silk, glancing around furtively at the whores and mimicking shyness.

He might have to leave soon; it was getting less and less safe for him here. Baelish, now- that man was a gambler. He did not know when to stop. Even when the Prince was expressly rushing for him and him alone [or so Varys thought], Baelish still thought to meet him head-on and scatter him.

Every-day, Varys took the form of the fishmonger. He had procured a fishing boat- even gone out to the open sea for a time, gazing at the walls of the Red Keep from a distance. One day he would leave once and for all- perhaps far, far sooner than he expected, in one moon or two. But he would leave; it was a course of action that he had resigned himself to.

Ah, King's Landing. He had almost grown to like it here, this putrid, stinking den of drunks and madmen.

"Heil Joffrey!" A blacksmith's apprentice shouted at him, and Vary snapped out of his thoughts and veered to the side in time. "Heil!" he agreed, blandly, matching the youth's salute with his own, and continued on his way.

Even men grown were starting to take on the Prince's conceits. Made-up words, all- heil was simply the word hail, pronounced a touch differently. Now, sieg- what the Prince's ex-maesters claimed was the Old Andal term for victory- that was a completely made-up word. Nonsense. And yet… it had a certain percussive feel to it. Prince Joffrey was on to something, perhaps.

Varys continued on his way, confident that he would leave King's Landing with his head.

[He would not, in case you're wondering.]

"Lord Rosby, Lady Stokeworth," I greeted them. The Decade was a familiar presence at my back, Uncle Jaime and Clegane putting their little arguments aside to appear sufficiently intimidating to cow any accusations of impropriety.

These were the great owners of the manses. Nobles from the Crownlands- more specifically, from the immediate environs surrounding the capital; I had ignored them, for a time- okay, for quite a long time- and they saw me now as a smallfolk-lover. Well, I'd soon show them just what smallfolk-lovers could do that Great Houses (capitalization included) couldn't. The other owners of the manses- well, the rest of it was owned by Baelish, and leased out to the most corrupt gold-cloaks, to merchants and mistresses and Baelish's men. They would fall soon enough.

They reminded me a bit of the Habsburgs; in spite of a few marginal explosions of marital luck, the Habsburgs had generally been inbred, narrow-minded and cowardly. House Rosby and House Stokeworth were the same; as one might imagine, they did not inspire much confidence. I glanced around at the entrance hall; it gave off the impression of grandeur, if largely gone to seed. There was the faint scent of mothballs, or perhaps that was my own imagination. These nobles were hardly rich.

"Prince Joffrey," Rosby wheezed, and coughed. Lady Stokeworth, the shriveled fossil on his arm, flinched away- she did it with a bit of boredom in her body language, as though she'd done this more than a few times before. She was not particularly beautiful (obviously, she was old) but nor was she, apparently, particularly intelligent. Do note that this was my mother's opinion of her- and when Cersei Lannistercalls you stupid, you may as well be an animal.

Rosby and Stokeworth were due to die soon, hopefully, and leave no heirs. Fantastic. Rosby had no heirs, but he did have a ward at Castle Rosby- easy enough to disappear. Stokeworth, on the other hand, had two daughters- one of whom drank too much, had been married for a decade (to another childless landowner of House Byrch), and remained childless, and the other of whom ate too much.

"Prince Joffrey," Stokeworth followed up, and curtseyed with a creak of her old joints.

You can't make this up. Three large landowners in the vicinity- all of them simple-minded, lacking in vigour and eager to please. You see three heirless fossils, I see opportunity. I thought of King's Landing as a bubble, a bubble within which I held dominion. Now that bubble expanded, swallowing up Rosby and Stokeworth and Hayford and Bywater- and soon all the Crownlands would bend the knee directly to me. Not that they didn't bend the knee to me already, but there was always room for greater control.

"I suppose you are well," I said lamely.

"Yes, yes, very well," Rosby wheezed (he didn't speak, he wheezed), and I briefly, macabrely, imagined pushing the lot of them into a vast blazing inferno, before banishing it and smiling as charmingly as possible. "Shall we- shall we eat?"

I brandished a basket. My Decade, too, pulled out their own containers. "Waste not, want not," I intoned, and Clegane covered his mouth and coughed rather too hard for his own good. I gave him a side-eye; he just coughed harder. Stokeworth blanched, glanced from one impassive face to another, and concluded that she'd better not risk it.

There were three others around the table: Falyse Stokeworth, Balman Byrch, and Lollys Stokeworth. Ah, my memory escaped me; Byrch was not a landowner, though he was a knight. I'd never really understood the point of professional soldiery; what did they do in times of peace? I suppose that was why there were so many sellswords and bandits.

I seated myself opposite the hosts and started eating immediately. There was a slightly vacant, awkward silence. I glanced up to meet the placid cow eyes of Lollys Stokeworth, who smiled shyly through teeth encrusted with meat and dipped her head back down to continue gorging herself.

Jesus Christ.

There were children starving a few yards away from her, in the centre of the city, and she was eating her weight in veal, venison and a bunch of other things starting with 'v'.

What a good little Communist you are, Joffrey, I told myself, and smiled as charmingly as I could manage. "Shall we eat?"

I could tell that the Lady Stokeworth was holding back a tart you've already started eating, but she sighed softly and performed the necessary social niceties.

This was going to be torture, hobnobbing with nobility. I enjoyed speaking to the nobility, or, more properly, speaking at the nobility- I did not enjoy currying favour, socializing, making small talk. It had been the same way back in Singapore. I dipped my head, chewed carefully, and made a face at Lemnos, who was at my right.

"How much would she fetch at market?" he whispered, nodding at Lollys. If she'd heard him, she gave no sign. I shrugged.

"A few stags, I'd wager."

There was a tiny candle burning on his desk. Qyburn could almost appreciate the significance of it- the feeling of a plan coming together. Prince Joffrey understood it, too.

Day after day, without fail, the Alchemists' Guild- formerly known as the pyromancers of the Targaryens- had sent one cupful of the stuff to make up for past failures- and there were always past failures. Trial and error, it was. Qyburn only needed a pinch of it to see if it was usable, but they insisted on sending one cupful, if in slightly smaller quantities. They were getting better at mixing. And, correspondingly, the powder was growing more and more potent, more and more manageable.

Prince Joffrey called it gunpowder. Qyburn referred to it, in his head, as pop-powder. That was the sound it made, when it went off. He looked at the newest "prototype" (another conceit of the Prince's) at his desk- all sleek lines and a nice wooden handle. Its power was deceptive. He whistled a song that Prince Joffrey had sung to himself, once, when sipping from a goblet of wine in between supplicants. As he hummed, he packed up his things.

Come with me

And you'll be

In a world of pure imagination

"Imagination"; now, that was an interesting word. Qyburn rolled it around in his mouth as he lifted the candle out and entered the empty hall. There would be no supplicants today; the Prince was "busy". As for Qyburn, he had entered Flea Bottom under an alias, wearing a flesh-mask (one of his own inventions); none would know who he was. As far as Flea Bottom knew, the apparatus of Prince Joffrey had not been by in days. Even Qyburn- Lord Qyburn, they called him, and wasn't that a treat!- had not been by to tend to the sick and dying. There would be more sick and dying soon enough.

"Lift it up," Qyburn said.

The young man's eyes had been open for ten minutes. They were tearing freely, hot wet salt streaming down his cheeks in an unending torrent, and glistened bright crimson. His mouth was hideously stretched, tendons stretched to their limit. He had been standing in place since Qyburn had last been in the hall- which was a few days ago. Now his body was crawling with vermin. He'd soiled himself. His head had been opened, and the substance within (the Prince insisted on calling it the brain; Qyburn preferred the term qyburnite) was exposed to the elements, with a few needles sticking out here and there. He lifted the string up, dumbly. Qyburn had kept the man in his own private quarters, locked tightly, the handle of the door slathered with a liquid that burned the skin and killed within minutes.

Qyburn took his cup of pop-powder and emptied two-thirds of it onto the pile. The pile rested on-top of a small clay pot filled with wildfire. A string led into the small clay pot. The other end of that string rested between the young man's fingertips. He held the candle out. The young man stretched his hand out and took the candle.

"Light the string when I shut the door," Qyburn instructed, softly, and turned on his heel to walk out, slipping the wet slippery flesh-mask on as he did. But before he shut the door, he paused; turned on his heel; met the eye of the crying, soiled man.

"Oh, Gendry Waters," Qyburn murmured. "I know not why the Prince wishes to condemn you for stealing. I appreciate your craftsmanship-" -and here he held the "musket" aloft- "-but now your watch is ended." He smiled; it was a kindly, grandfatherly smile. "And to create- we must first be willing to destroy."

He turned and left. Gendry Waters, numbly, his body obeying the commands of Prince Joffrey's closest advisor, touched the flame to the string. It burned, quickly, through his fingertips, down the string, down, down, down to the clay pot with the wildfire. The wildfire, incidentally, was above a fairly large quantity of gunpowder.

In a few minutes, Flea Bottom went up in flames.

King's Landing burned.

Tyrion Lannister spurred his horse forward, stared open-mouthed at the plume of green fire erupting into the sky, far above the tallest tower in King's Landing, and realized abruptly what Jaime had meant when he'd written:

You'll know the signal when you see it. Act accordingly.

Oh, he would act accordingly.

"Hear me roar," Tyrion grumbled to himself, derisively, and barked at his men to stop staring and ride faster.

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Neptune1

Oct 4, 2017

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Neptune1

Disturbingly obsessed with Nilbog

Oct 4, 2017

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#28

Prime_Axiom said:

My mind's still trying to comprehend the first chapter alone, but who cares? It's a Nep fic. That alone requires my likes and my watch.

Your abundance of faith is pleasing.

I'd told Qyburn to surprise me.

That way, when the explosion sounded- with a roar that shook the Red Keep down to its foundations- when I snapped my head up from sparring with Roys and the two of us watched, dumbly, as Flea Bottom disappeared under a torrent of green fire- the surprise on my face would be genuine.

I paused, for a heartbeat, one, two, and then I turned and shouted myself hoarse.

"Flea Bottom is burning! Flea Bottom is burning!" I took another breath. "FIRE! FIRE!"

The Decade reacted just as they had been told to. Seven went to me, calling to their own men- allocated and selected from the Century- and the other three, well, they had their orders.

"WHAT ARE YOU STARING AT?" I screamed at the assorted hangers-on around the training yard, gazing dumbly back at me. "MOVE YOUR ASSES!"

Then I started moving.

Robert Baratheon rose from his slumber blearily, then all at once.

"There's a fire," Jon said, breathing heavily, as though he'd had to run up all the way to inform him, and suddenly Robert was acutely aware of the sheer exhaustion in his expression, the age weighing him down. Jon was no longer able to fight fires- not the way he'd been able to in his youth- and it pained him. Then the insight was gone, and Robert was rising to his feet, not even bothering to put on his tunic and doublet, pushing the whore away roughly as she instinctively reached for his arm. He fastened his trousers around his waist and made for the door.

"Robert-"

Robert turned. Jon was staring at him, hand to his chest, inhaling and exhaling desperately, leaning against the wall and carefully avoiding looking at the whore.

"Be careful."

Robert nodded, once, tersely, and then moved out the door. His blood sang. Finally, some action, he thought, and felt mildly guilty at being excited that hundreds of smallfolk were probably dead so he could feel good about himself.

Cersei was emerging from her chambers as he passed by. "Put some clothes on," she snapped. There had once been a time when he'd thought her beautiful; now, even with her hair ruffled, her shoulders visible, the hint of her breasts under her crimson Lannister sheets, disheveled like Lyanna had been, Robert refused to turn to look. The smallfolk needed him. King's Landing needed him.

"Why should I," Robert growled, without turning to look, "when it'll burn away regardless?"

He felt her stare on his retreating back, and then a gasp as she looked out her window.

Men from the Millennium- men from everywhere, really, including men from the City Watch, some of whom had for some reason had daubed their golden cloaks with red paint- were pulling people away from the blazing inferno. There Qyburn emerged, a white-haired, kind-faced old man, calm and soothing in a way that boggled the mind- and he rallied the defenders, calling to them in his old, old voice, giving them courage and strength to charge into the flames and emerge with charred husks.

Qyburn set up shop outside the city, with all his tools on hand (some would whisper how prepared he was for such an eventuality, in the days after the fire, and immediately get shouted down). Now the injured, the burnt, the charred- all were laid down on the soft grass of the tourney grounds, and Qyburn rubbed his fingers, dipped them in vinegar and then in hot water, and got to work. He'd learnt a lot from the criminals whom Prince Joffrey had condemned, after all, and it would not be an understatement to say that he was a better healer than he'd been when he'd first entered King's Landing. He could be useful here.

Buckets were passed from hand to hand. Stannis Baratheon was there, among the men of King's Landing, shoulder to shoulder with the smallfolk, his jaw set in stubbornness as though he refused to permit the wildfire to destroy the city. Renly Baratheon bent down and came back up, bent down and came back up, a freshly filled bucket from the Blackwater in his tightly corded muscles.

This, Grand Maester Pycelle thought to himself, as he delivered orders swiftly, his veneer of old age giving way to the quick mind and base cunning that had brought him to King's Landing and kept him there for over a decade, this is what legends are made of.

He watched as Joffrey Baratheon ran his hands through his blonde hair, leaving tracks of soot. He watched as the King followed his son's movements as Prince Joffrey darted from place to place, banging on doors and holding quick, lightning-fast meetings with his lieutenants, hair as dusky and dark as that of any Baratheon. Pycelle smiled to himself.

"Let us in," Tyrion Lannister shouted, from atop his horse, and the gold-cloak wavered between acceptance and refusal for a second too long. He was pulled from his position, and replaced by another fellow; the man nodded down at him, tersely, and when he turned away Tyrion saw that his cloak was daubed with red paint. Red and gold, he thought to himself. Good on you, nephew. For the first time in living memory, a Lannister enters King's Landing not to sack it but to save it.

If this was orchestrated by Joffrey… well, Tyrion didn't know what to think right now, but he was radically revising his opinion of his nephew.

"We have wineskins filled with water," he told the nearest red-gold-cloak. In the distance, there were figures silhouetted against the flames; men on horseback, their arms wrapped around wooden tubs, tipping water into the flames. Every-time they tipped it in, the fire ebbed a little bit more. He galloped past the Sept of Baelor, his men at his back, and noted absently that the fire was hemmed in between the Red Keep and the (disintegrating?) Dragonpit; it had only two directions to spread.

One pot of wildfire, Tyrion thought. As well as a great deal of help to make the explosion sufficiently dramatic. Sufficiently dangerous. Sufficiently epic.

Why else would the fire be confined to Flea Bottom? If the man who had set the fire had truly intended to burn all King's Landing, he would've buried more pots of wildfire, and in closer proximity. Why produce a single blaze that could be extinguished in little more than a day?

Tyrion focused on the section of the fire that was closer to him. If he wanted to win a part in this mummer's farce, well, he would be hard-pressed to find a better stage. Tyrion galloped forward, past the piles of rubble that had once been houses but were now nothing more than blocks designed to hold the flames in check, emptied his wineskin onto the water, and was gratified to see a charred corpse come into view as the flames receded just a little bit more. His horse cantered over the man, just a bit forward, and then he emptied another wineskin.

"WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH!" someone shouted from behind.

"WE HAVE WATER," someone roared from behind him, and Robert Baratheon, in all his half-naked glory, hairy chest exposed, belly jiggling, rode up on a horse. His skin was dusted with soot; two full buckets hung from both hands. If a man so gone to seed could carry one full bucket of water in each hand… well, Tyrion would hate to see that man in his prime. He threw one bucket to Tyrion, and another to the closest servant. Tyrion caught it- barely- shuddering from the impact. Quickly, he upended it, and the fire receded again.

There were more smallfolk rushing to him, their eyes bright with intent, a human chain pushing the fire back. It was shrinking, yes, but it was hard work. Imagine if King's Landing had really gone up in flames; it would have been worse. Tyrion turned and saw a youth cradling the corpse in his arms, galloping for the gates.

"DON'T GO," he shouted. "WE NEED EVERY MAN WE CAN GET-"

The youth interrupted him. "QYBURN WILL FIX HIM!"

Qyburn… so that was the use to which Joffrey was putting the disgraced maester.

Petyr Baelish was already awake when the explosion rang out. His head snapped up from where he was sitting at his desk in his private manse, surrounded by carefully obfuscated financial records, and just in time to see the first plume of fire consume the centre of Flea Bottom.

So this was the Crown Prince's move. How… smart of him. A corner of Baelish's mouth turned up slightly, sardonically. Sacrifice some of his troops in the hope that he'd be able to displace more of Baelish's own pieces. That was all it was, in the end- a hope. It would not become a reality. Petyr shut his accounts book with a snap, rose to his feet, and strode out into the main hall.

There were men whom he- well, if not trusted- men whom he had confidence in, from the gold-cloaks, lounging in the couches lining the hall, enjoying the whores whom he'd brought by specially for them. He had many men in his employ, and this current situation called for men who were suited for violence. Janos Slynt was bouncing his knee irritably, glancing out the window, and he shoved his whore aside and rose to his feet when Baelish entered.

"Pray tell me what you would have me do," he said, glancing over his shoulder again, "for the City Watch will want its Commander, and my time is fast running out."

"You know Prince Joffrey's men. His Dekad, his Centurii."

"I do. As do my men." The whores withdrew, giving Slynt's men a final glance over their shoulder as they departed. Swords were hefted in hand; cloaks thrown over shoulders.

"Find them. Kill them. But make sure to be seen fighting the fire- we don't want any accusations of disloyalty."

He sat there, in his manse, thinking his moves over, brow wrinkled in thought. When the banging started, he had a servant open it- and then rose to his feet, startled, as the servant fell to the floor, blood gushing from his throat.

"Mockingbird! Mockingbird!"

Janos Slynt stumbled in, blood seeping from a dozen wounds on his body. He had been stripped of his clothing, and there were deep gashes across his stomach. "Turn-cloaks," he wheezed, prodded forward by the mob at his back, "Betrayal." And then he fell flat on his belly, a dagger sticking out of his back. A man with crimson hair- one of the Prince's lieutenants- pulled it out smartly and stuck it back in his belt.

The men of the City Watch who entered the manse, fanning out around Petyr, still bore their gold-cloaks, though they were dusted with soot. Their cloaks flapped in the smoke-scented breeze; and they were daubed with red. Lannister colours. Petyr could not help but appreciate the irony. I side with the Queen, and this is how her son treats me.

"Let's discuss this like civilized men," he said, and reached into his pocket for his pouch of dragons. The mob remained silent; he recognized another one of the Prince's lieutenants, and two sparrows to either shoulder. He pulled the pouch out; held out one palm-full of dragons. "Here," he shouted, gazing into the crowd, "take all my belongings. Take all my accounts. I can tell you where my riches are stored in this city; I give it all to you. Just let me leave with my life, and I shall never return to this city again."

The sparrow stepped forward. Petyr emptied the dragons into his hand. The brown-clothed man took one of the dragons and bit into it; then, with a roar of disgust, he flung it on the floor, and the angry murmurings finally burst into life. "WE WILL NOT TAKE A GROAT FROM YOU WHILE YOU STILL LIVE, SWINE!" he bellowed, and was backed up by "HEIL!" from the crowd. The Prince's man- Vardis, if Petyr's memory served him well- echoed the cry, a smirk on his face, eyes fixed on Petyr's.

Petyr took one step back, then two, then three, then four, and then he turned to run. He was still fairly young, and managed to break through the ring of men encircling him, but there were too many of them. He made it into the kitchens and out the door before another group of men seized him. They paraded round to the front, chanting over the roar of the flames. Half of King's Landing was fighting the blaze, just over Rhaenys' Hill; the other half had seized the opportunity to raid the manses, chase his clients out. In the distance, he thought he saw the entire Stokeworth family- all three of them- atop one of the city towers, prodded at knifepoint into the Narrow Sea.

He blinked, and realized that he was crying, and that he had soiled himself. "I'll open up all the brothels in King's Landing," he babbled, aware that money meant nothing to the vengeful population of the city, roused to fury by the sparrows and the maesters. He should have been more careful. More cautious. He'd been proud; too proud. "Any woman you want, I can give it to you. Any boy, too. I'll lick your boot. I'll do anything. Don't kill me. Please. Please. I repent, I repent."

Still nothing, thought there was a deep and sinister chuckle of amusement that rose from the crowd as they brought him towards one of the trees at the corner of the wide street. He knew that street well; he passed by that tree every-day, on his way to the Red Keep. Now there was a rope hanging from it.

"ON THIS DAY," a sparrow was howling, another one, hoisted up on a thin wooden platform, "WE CLEANSE THE CITY!" Roars, loud and demented, even as a good portion of the city remained in flames.

"I DECLARE THIS MAN THE SOLE SOURCE OF OUR SUFFERINGS! IT IS BAELISH, WHO HAS RAPED YOUR DAUGHTERS! IT IS BAELISH, WHO HAS BEGGARED YOUR SONS! IT IS BAELISH, WHO HAS CAST YOU DOWN, O PROUD AND MIGHTY PEOPLE OF KING'S LANDING! THE TREE OF OUR DIGNITY IS WATERED WITH THE BLOOD OF MOCKINGBIRDS!"

"HEIL! HEIL! HEIL!"

"SUFFER NOT THE MOCKINGBIRD TO LIVE!"

If Petyr had been able to cover his ears, he would have- but he no longer had the luxury to do so. He was still pleading with his captors as they looped the noose round his neck and pulled on the other end of the rope.

The last words he spoke was "a million dragons for each of you, one Free City for each of you, please please just don't kill me oh gods Cat I love you-" and then a wheeze as the rope pulled taut.

The last words he heard, though, was "HEIL! HEIL! HEIL!" And then the beginnings of cheers as he took his last breath.

Varys, for his part, kept his head down, his mouth shut, and thought furiously as to how to get out of his predicament.

This is how it should be, Robert thought to himself, deliriously, his heart throbbing in his ears as he wheeled his horse around and galloped a perimeter around the fire, shouting entreaties to the men as they laboured to bring the water in. His eyes lingered on Joffrey's soot-stained hair; how could he even for a moment have thought that he was not his son? The line of his jaw; the look in his eye; the strength of his arm; all these and more were his, as well as his son's. How had he even thought, for a second, that his son was not his? He was, he was, he was.

"MY SON," he roared, as the barriers held and the fire was pushed back, back, back into what had once been Flea Bottom, "YOU ARE MY SON, AND I AM PROUD."

His son glanced back, eyes sparkling with tears, and smiled. Some distance away, Stannis looked up, eyes wide, and Renly, even further off, glanced up in surprise. But the vast majority of the smallfolk cheered, even as their eyes remained fixed on their next task, the next bucket of water. Robert felt around for his warhammer; he'd collapsed one of those buildings, just him, in the early stages of the fire. To his left he'd seen his son wielding a hammer much like those in the Street of Steel- a long, long handle and a solid double-ended head. The bricks shattered where his blows landed.

He is mine, Robert thought, mind whirling with the revelation. And my brothers. They are mine too. We are Baratheons, and ours is the fury. Here was the camaraderie that he had missed in war. Here was that singing in his blood as he'd slew Rhaegar on the banks of the Trident. It was all back, all back. Robert drew himself up to his full height, his broad shoulders pulling back, and tipped his head to the sky and shouted.

OURS IS THE FURY!

For a while there was nothing but the crackling of the flames as what felt like all of King's Landing fell silent. The Kingsguard had accompanied him on his mad dash to and from the Blackwater, all across the city, although they had all fallen away to aid in the firefighting. Now they stepped forward, solemnly, from the crowd, driven by the moment like everyone else, as the smallfolk continued to press forward, bucket by bucket, inch by inch. The Kingsguard drew their swords- from the Kingslayer to Ser Barristan to dead-eyed Moore. They held them aloft.

Joffrey's eyes glinted with some indefinable emotion- Robert knew not what it was, save that it was intense- and then he held his right arm aloft, stiff, his long-handled hammer in his other hand, and opened his mouth.

"HEIL!" bounced off the rooftops, sent the carrion birds flying from the tourney grounds, where Qyburn had just saved an infant from the charred womb of its dead mother.

"HEIL!" echoed in the ears of fat Lollys Stokeworth as she fell over the battlements, bound for the sea, the tears flowing freely as her stomach grumbled, consigned along with her lady mother and her sister and her goodbrother to a watery death.

"HEIL!" erupted from the throat of Tyrion Lannister, his hands empty, his face dusted with soot, laughing like a maniac in the privacy of his own mind, sorely tempted to laugh at the madness of it all, the sheer audacity of his nephew's plan. Because of course no one would notice the manses being looted and pillaged, not when they were behind Rhaenys' Hill, while the fire was in front. Of course no one would notice the disappearance of a few peripheral lords from their manses, when it could blamed on traitors- which he assumed his nephew had, lined up in spades. Of course.

And, loudest of all, "HEIL!" blared from the vast chest of Robert Baratheon, King upon the Iron Throne, as he lifted his own thick arm into the air. And, after some hesitation, his brothers, the multifarious anonymous knights and attendants, the various hangers-on at court- they all followed suit.

"HEIL BARATHEON! HEIL BARATHEON! HEIL BARATHEON!"

And the fire in the depths of King's Landing was finally extinguished. Nothing remained of the old hall where Prince Joffrey had once held his audiences. And nothing remained of Gendry Waters, nor of the criminals whom Prince Joffrey had remanded to the tender mercies of Qyburn, nor of the discarded muskets and gunpowder which had proved to be of inferior quality to the prototypes that Qyburn, even now, kept close to him in a simple cloth bag.

"I beg your pardon," Jon Arryn growled. "Are you saying that Petyr Baelish- the Master of Coin, a loyal and capable servant whom I have known personally since before you were born- pushed the Stokeworths into the Narrow Sea?"

"I am," Prince Joffrey replied, soberly, his hair still dusted with soot. Jon wasn't sure if it was deliberate. "And, furthermore, the smallfolk proceeded to hang him from a tree."

Jon gaped at the audacity.

"I did not arrange this," the Prince pleaded, but at this point Jon was not in a particularly credulous mood. "Please, Lord Arryn, don't execute those men. They did what they thought was right."

It was a mob, from what I'm hearing. How does one execute a mob without causing a riot that'd make today's fire look like a mere candle?

"What's this I hear about Varys being in your custody?"

"Oh," and here there was a definite cast to the Prince's eyes, "he is guilty of treason. We trust not the Black Cells to hold him. There should be a trial as soon as possible- on the morrow, perhaps, after the city has calmed down."

Jon found himself, again, struck dumb at the audacity. "Varys has served the Throne since the Mad King," he mumbled.

"Exactly," the Prince retorted. "Since the Mad King. Do you think I'd gone down into Flea Bottom to, what, cavort with the smallfolk? I went down into its filthy depths to investigate. I've found files, Lord Arryn, files that were written in some strange code. I told none but my most trusted men of the investigation, for fear that Varys would send a little bird to kill me."

"And what did you find?"

The Prince withdrew a sheaf of papers from his cloak. "This was all I could find. A smattering of notes on the various regions of Westeros. And some extremely in-depth information on King's Landing. As well as what would seem to be something of a confession."

Jon flicked through it and swore in confusion. "What code is this?"

"I know not," Prince Joffrey replied, "but the ex-maesters know." He shrugged insouciantly. "Mayhaps you could ask them." He withdrew another sheaf of papers from his cloak and passed it to Jon. "This is the translation- fear not, I have sworn them to secrecy."

Jon was about to ask them why they would need to be sworn to secrecy… and then he finally took a good look at the translations. His eyes widened.

The Prince's expression was very grave. "Harsh allegations indeed," he murmured, as Jon finally set the papers down and covered his face with his hands. "The King and his Hand, both cuckolded by the Kingslayer and the Master of Coin. Lord Stark- your own ward- and two of his children the seed of a common blacksmith. The Master of Laws, a man-lover. The Master of Ships, heirless save for a girl once struck with greyscale and unlikely to have any-more." He laughed humorlessly. "Varys predicts the extinction of the Baratheons, the Lannisters and the Arryns."

Jon croaked, "Slander." Then: "Why give me this when you could cut out-" he caught himself before he could say the truth- "-the allegation of your own illegitimacy from its pages?"

Prince Joffrey shrugged. "I am the trueborn son of King Robert. He said so in front of all King's Landing. What have I to fear?" His green eyes met Jon's. "You, on the other hand..."

Jon's lips thinned. "Point taken." A gesture of solidarity. A threat. Mercy?

"Which is why we shall present Varys' confession before the crowd in the throne on the morrow, and nothing else."

Jon said nothing for some time; then, he nodded firmly. The Prince nodded back at him, once, and left the room. The door clicked shut behind him.

The Hand of the King finally allowed himself to slump in his chair. He stared at the papers before him for a long time.

Then his fingers curled into a fist.

Lysa.

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It's Chins All The Way Down (Don Carlos SI)

Grunnings Drills, Inc. (Harry Potter AU)

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Neptune1

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Dec 27, 2017

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#36

Lancel Lannister paused at the door.

"...damn it, you weren't supposed to kill Littlefinger," his cousin raged. "I told you to keep him alive to answer for his crimes! Our work should have been enough to tear off his head and Varys' several times over!"

"I had no control over my men," replied the other… Vardis, Lancel thought it was. He was surprisingly calm for someone being shouted at by one of the most powerful men in King's Landing. "The sparrow fanned the flames into an inferno; he was dead before I could think to stop them, and some of my men were even cheering them on."

"Spare me," his cousin hissed. "Stop politicking. Stop pushing the blame. Yes, you got me the accounts books; yes, you are one of the Decade. But that does not mean that you will be able to enrich and exalt yourself with impunity. There will not be a next time, you hear me?"

There was a mumbled apology, and then Lancel was stepping aside as Vardis flung the door open. He glanced at Lancel, his stormy expression changing quickly to a smirk, and bumped into him with his shoulder as he went. Lancel looked after him, grimacing, and made a rude sign at his retreating back.

"I have four namedays on him," he complained, as his cousin turned from where he was staring over King's Landing. "Joffrey, you should keep that Roys in check; he likes ordering me around." The scar on his palm still burned a little from that day when he'd sliced his palm with a bunch of other boys from court, his brother and Ser Santagar's son among them. They were part of Joffrey's "Senturii"; a weird name, but then again, Joffrey had to be allowed his little eccentricities. Lancel and his brother, Tyrek, had been among the men conscripted to fight the fire; they had performed admirably, and Lancel himself had been there as the King lifted the Imp onto his broad shoulders and shouted his praises, thanking the Seven for the opportune arrival of the man who had become his favourite drinking partner.

"Such is the chain of command," Joffrey murmured. "Sorry, Lancel. Hey, at least you've got more money than him, eh?"

"Not for long, if what I've been hearing is true."

"What have you been hearing? You have exclusive access to me; why would you listen to words on the wind?"

"Well, then, what's the point of all these? Your Dekad, your Senturii, your Milenium- what's the point of establishing fancy titles and orders if you don't intend to lead a rebellion or seize territory or something?"

"I haven't decided yet," Joffrey admitted. "Come on, don't lie. You enjoy it, don't you? The 'Heil'ing and the marching and the torches. Sometimes, ceremony is its own reward."

Lancel sighed. Belatedly, Joffrey offered an apology. His apologies… well, they were unlike anything Lancel had ever seen. "Come over here," he muttered, and Lancel did. Joffrey looped his long arm around Lancel's shoulders and gestured over the rudimentary map that he had spread out before on his desk.

"The Decade, the Century, the Millennium- they are merely tools, Lancel," he hissed into Lancel's ear. "Where is the true power? Why, the mummers and the bards and the defrocked maesters and the sparrows have been singing about it for moons. The true power lies in our blood." Joffrey spread his hands, and Lancel saw that both his palms were marred by scar tissue. "This is why I insist on the ritual, Lancel- there is power in blood. Symbolism. I clasp hands with them- I am sharing my blood with them. And from there we are bonded, me and my men- they, bound to serve me, and I, bound to receive their service." Lancel glanced away, to look around his cousin's office- at the tapestry of the Seven Kingdoms hanging on the wall, and a stag and lion on either side of it. There was a tear over Oldtown, where a dagger appeared to have pierced the fine fabric; he pretended not to notice it.

"And I, bound to serve you?" Lancel quipped.

Joffrey grinned. "If you wish." He guided Lancel to the window and bade him look over the city, over the deep scar that now lay between Rhaenys' Hill and the Red Keep. "A barren land," he said. "Ripe for rebuilding."

Lancel chuckled at his cousin's attempts at appearing mysterious. "I'm not hearing an apology, cousin."

Joffrey sighed. "You've status, Lancel, of course you do, and much gold besides, but in the presence of Roys, you are his subordinate, and as such he has power over you. If you mislike it, you shouldn't have cut your palm in the first place. I'll speak to Roys." He shrugged. "My Decade shall never ascend to the heights of the Lannisters… not so long as both stay loyal to the Crown."

Lancel laughed. "The Crown is House Lannister- and House Baratheon, to a certain extent." He pulled a face, pulled away and made for the door. "Anyways, the Queen sent me to tell you to come down. She wants you on your best behaviour for the trial."

"I'm one of the people speaking; of course I'll be on my best behaviour." Joffrey ran his hands through his hair; it was clear of soot, today, but it was slightly darker than normal.

"Did you dye your hair?" Lancel inquired, curiously.

Joffrey glared at him and said nothing.

So he had.

Tyrion had not spoken to his nephew yet, but a boy by the name of Vardis had given him the ledgers of Petyr Baelish. They had fit in a whole wagon, so Tyrion supposed that this Baelish was extremely meticulous.

Yes. Meticulous… and slippery like an eel.

He'd made some headway on cracking the cypher, with the help of that Qyburn fellow, but all he'd got from that little session was a splitting headache and the sinking feeling that Baelish had sunk his sticky fingers into every corner of the financial infrastructure of the Seven Kingdoms. So there he sat, in one of the chairs provided, in the place formerly occupied by Baelish, and leafed through the ledgers idly as Varys was prodded into position by the Kingsguard. To his left, Qyburn occupied Varys' old post. No one had questioned it, although Pycelle had glared indignantly; so, the old man was quite respected by the people here. Or perhaps it was his position at Joffrey's right hand.

His nephew was dressed in black and gold, with a few hints of red. In the dim light, his hair looked almost black. Tyrion fancied it was by design.

Jaime winked at him from where he was standing beside Varys, the eunuch's bald head glistening with mud and gleaming in the light streaming from behind the Iron Throne. Tyrion winked back. Their talk last night had been… well, informative, to say the least. The whore whom he'd bought the services of was equally talkative, and before long Tyrion found himself being taught to say "Heil!" by her.

Disquieting.

"I call this court to order," Renly Baratheon said, rapping his desk. On this occasion, a fairly large number of smallfolk had arrived to pack the throne room to the rafters. The nobility of King's Landing had been, for the most part, sidelined- not like there were a lot of them here during this period. No tourneys to take part in- feh! Why bother coming down to King's Landing?

Joffrey was still a little shit, of course, but he was now taller, and faintly terrifying. Tyrion did not hate his nephew to such an extent that he would call him the second coming of his lord father, of course, but there were definitely some similarities. Like Tywin Lannister, Joffrey Baratheon was not the sort of person whom you would feel comfortable approaching in the streets and having a drink with. Tyrion, on the other hand (it should go without saying), was.

"The accused, Varys, former Master of Whispers to Aerys II and Robert I. The charges..." Renly squinted at his parchment. "Treason. Multiple counts." He glanced up at the court. "And there's evidence, apparently." He chuckled weakly. There were no smiles on the faces of the smallfolk, and Renly's own jape soon died away. He shuffled his papers.

Jon Arryn proffered a sheaf of paper from where he was seated beside the King. The Hand's hand (heh) trembled as Renly took it. To Arryn's left, the King slouched in his chair, eyes glinting with a sort of bored malice, fingers drumming his not inconsiderable belly. His eyes were fixed on the eunuch's bowed head.

"Let me read it," Joffrey said.

Renly glanced up, and something passed between the two of them. Wordlessly, the sheaf of paper changed hands again. Joffrey held it in his hands, cleared his throat, and spoke, slowly and loudly and dramatically.

I'd composed the confession myself. That was just how things were done in Westeros, when there were no available recording devices. I could plant evidence with impunity and still not get caught, because the legal system was so very primitive.

This would be one of my finest performances yet. Back in Singapore, I'd done a reading of Shylock's Hath a Jew not eyes? and Macbeth's… well, a bunch of stuff from Macbeth. My English teacher had said that I'd do quite well in drama, and yet… well, there I was, in Gym Club, of all things.

The entire fire had been stage-managed rather well, if I do say so myself. Fat Bob's reaction to the whole spectacle had been beyond my wildest expectations- the Demon of the Trident had his mojo back. Similarly, I'd noticed that Lysa Arryn was absent on this fine morning; perhaps the Hand had had some words with his lady wife the previous night. All the better.

Among the allegations which I had composed included accusations of Catelyn Stark cuckolding Ned Stark, on account of the red hair and blue eyes of Robb and Sansa Stark. There was, of course, a nugget of truth in the form of accusations of Jaime Lannister cuckolding Fat Bob… as was necessary... and, to bookend it all, the simple truth that the Arryns had always had blonde hair and blue eyes (heh, very pure and Aryan of them) and Sweetrobin… well… he had brown hair.

Now that had thrown Arryn for a loop. If he took Varys' words for truth, confirming his suspicions as pertaining to myself and my siblings, that would mean that he'd be acknowledging, even marginally, the possibility that he'd be presiding over the final extinction of House Arryn. I'd confused him, and hopefully stopped the whole "Joffrey's an illegitimate bastard born of incest" conspiracy in its tracks permanently.

I cleared my throat again.

I, Varys, the Eunuch, put these words to paper on the eve of the culmination of my life's work.

When I was young, Aerys II sent for me from Pentos. Not only had he recourse to purchase my wide range of talents- he also felt some kinship with me. He knew not why, but I did. Yes- I admit it- I am a Targaryen. But not a Targaryen of pure blood- I am a Blackfyre. I may trace my lineage back to Calla Blackfyre, wife of Aegor Rivers. One of her grandchildren was lost at sea; in truth, that grandchild was sold into slavery, and so there I was, born in Lys.

I worked for Aerys II for a time, but I misliked him, for he was mad. I fanned the flames of his madness and paranoia, and orchestrated his downfall. In the days before his passing, he ordered that jars of wildfire be buried across King's Landing, and appointed a high-ranking member of the Pyromancers' Guild as Hand. Before he could light it and turn everything to ashes, Jaime Lannister killed him, never knowing what he had planned for the city.

But I knew.

I, Varys, named Aenys Blackfyre at birth, arranged for the disappearance of Rhaella Targaryen over the waves. I have protected my distant relatives Viserys and Daenerys since they were born, and before that, besides. I have protected them from the depredations of their mad father.

In addition, I planted a false infant in the arms of Elia Martell in the days before the Sack. It was not the true Aegon Targaryen whom Gregor Clegane murdered by dashing his brains out upon the wall- merely an imposter, the bastard son of a poor washerwoman. Aegon Targaryen, Sixth of his Name, dwells in Pentos with Viserys and Daenerys with Jon Connington. They are to return when King's Landing is in flames and the Usurper is dead.

Now I undertake my mission. It shall either succeed- and I raised to greatness- or it shall fail, in fire, just as Aerys wished to die. The heir of the Usurper has been digging up jars of wildfire with Jaime Lannister- I should have killed him when he killed my cousin- and I must act soon. So, now, under candlelight, I pen my memoirs. If I succeed, I shall see to it that this letter finds its way into the possession of the last Targaryens before I arrive, and I myself elevated to Lord Paramount of whichever land I desire. If I fail…

Fire and Blood.

Death to the Usurper.

Aenys Blackfyre, also known as Varys the Eunuch.

Silence fell over the court. Varys had abandoned all pretenses of being a calm, resigned prisoner, and was now staring at me, his eyes wide, a not-quite-smile on his face. My father had stopped drumming his fingers on his belly and was sitting up on the Iron Throne, his spine ramrod straight, knuckles hovering ominously over his warhammer, which had, for the occasion, been brought from its case at my behest.

"And there you have it," I declared. "Dragonspawn in King's Landing. I'd thought I'd weeded out the last of the dragons when I tore the Dragonpit down, but it seems that I had not known just how far the rot had spread. Why, right under my nose- under our noses- the Targaryens yet remain."

Varys was still looking at me with a gaze which looked torn between respect, fury, awe and resignation. "Such a convincing fraud," he said, softly, but it was enough to bring the short flurry of conversation to a halt. "So this is what you were hatching up in Flea Bottom, Prince Joffrey."

"Hatching up?" I shook my head hard, praying to high heaven that no one knew I was lying. My heart beat madly in my chest. "No, no, no, Lord Varys- or should I say Aenys Blackfyre- I was in Flea Bottom with my men searching for your hovel. And I found it. Why, all your papers are in my possession right n-"

"Why should I wish to burn King's Landing down? If I had truly wanted to, then the whole city would be in flames by now." Varys spread his hands. "Instead, the inferno was contained to Flea Bottom, and spread little from there-"

"That's because I divided my time between scouring Flea Bottom and searching for the other caches of wildfire. I knew that your base was in Flea Bottom," and here I inhaled briefly, "and from there, it was simplicity itself to search the basements of houses in the vicinity. That chain reaction with the wildfire was stopped in its tracks-" and here I exposed my teeth victoriously, trying desperately to shatter Varys' calm composure, "dragonspawn."

The smallfolk started to chant the word. "Dragonspawn. Dragonspawn. Dragonspawn."

"I am no dragonspawn," Varys replied, smiling, but I drew myself to my full height.

"You are dragonspawn, Aenys Blackfyre!" I shouted, as the chanting continued. "I name you Aenys Blackfyre, and I name you traitor!" I turned to Uncle Renly, the tendons standing out on my neck. "Verdict, Master of Laws?"

Uncle Renly blinked and jerked. His eyes flicked from side to side, taking in the angry faces and clenched fists of the smallfolk. Then he realized that his brother was hefting his warhammer in his hand, as though testing its weight. And, last of all, he seemed to recall the deal that he, through Loras Tyrell, had struck with me. "G-guilty," he blurted.

I opened my mouth, but Fat Bob had gotten there first. "My friend Ned said that the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword," he muttered, and the chant cut off like a switch had been flipped. "I am the King, and it is through my authority that Lord Renly passes the sentence. The verdict is guilty. The sentence is death." He swung his warhammer, and I did not flinch as Varys' skull erupted.

It looked way different when it wasn't your skull getting obliterated, I reflected. The smallfolk murmured in approval, and my father stumped back to his throne. But before he did, he paused, glanced at me, and then at Uncle Jaime. "Kingslayer," he rumbled, "you must have been holding out upon the realm, if that dragonspawn considered you such an enemy." He clapped Uncle Jaime on the shoulders. "Well done."

"My thanks, your Grace." I glanced at the smallfolk, and a beat later, the hall erupted with cheers. Fat Bob received the applause graciously and then moved on to Uncle Tyrion.

"Your arrival, Lord Tyrion, was most opportune. Helped us to hem in an edge of the fire that might've spread." My father grinned. "Well done, Lord Lannister."

"My thanks, your Grace." More cheers. Then he did the same thing to Qyburn- Pycelle looked like he was going to explode- and then to Pycelle- that, at least, calmed the old Grand Master. Then he called me to the dais, and Uncles Stannis and Renly too.

"These," he boomed, to the assembled crowd- my creatures, to a man- " these men are of House Baratheon." He laid one thundering hand over my shoulder, while his other hand pulled Stannis and Renly close. "They have served King's Landing well."

I raised my right arm aloft.

"Heil Baratheon! Heil Baratheon! Heil Baratheon!"

"Uncle," Joffrey said.

Tyrion waddled to his nephew's desk in Maegor's Holdfast and hauled himself into a chair. "Nephew," he replied. "My, I see you've changed from the cat-killing little shit you were but a few moons ago."

Joffrey laughed. "I have, haven't I?" he inquired in response- already a vast improvement from the blustery, vicious stripling whom Tyrion had known- and smiled wryly. "How's Baelish's account books treating you?"

Tyrion shrugged. "Nothing I can't handle. He's left a pretty mess- although, now that I have the reins to his vast personal fortune, it should make it easier to pay off all the monstrous loans he's taken from the Iron-"

Joffrey held up a hand. "Please, don't tell me about that. I don't want to know how shitty the finances are."

"Why not, nephew? You're the one who's put me in this position after all."

Joffrey's face bore the expression of a servant boy who had been caught stealing sweetmeats from the larder. "Why," Tyrion chortled, "did you think I'm stupid? Tyrion Lannister, Master of Coin." He thumped his chest. "My father would be over the moon- I wouldn't need to show my face at Casterly Rock ever again."

"Your father is a cunt," Joffrey grunted, sourly, and the insult was so barefaced and brief that Tyrion let out a sharp bark of laughter before he could help himself.

"Oh, really? He treated you and my sweet sister with courtesy on your last familial visit."

Joffrey paused. There was a queer look on his face before he forged forward anyway. "That's as may be, Uncle, but Varys' files contained more secrets than Varys' own Targaryen blood. There was a file on you- a marriage annulled, the girl cast away-"

Tyrion's good cheer was gone. His face was a rictus. "Cast away, eh?" His upcoming ascension to the Small Council- if it were even a foregone conclusion, as he suspected it might not be- was cast away as well. "Where," Tyrion inquired lightly, eyes burning, "might the girl have gone?"

His nephew held his gaze for a beat. "Varys says that he believes she works in Braavos as a whore." He held his finger up, briefly, and then lowered it when Tyrion's expression did not change- did Jaime himself not tell me that she was a whore? "This whore speaks the Common Tongue. Supposedly, she has a daughter, who also works as a whore… and has golden hair."

Tyrion flinched, briefly, at that last sentence, and sat back heavily in his chair. "It's just as well that I'm going to have dealings with the Iron Bank, isn't it?" he asked, cheerfully, and slid off his chair to waddle out the room.

"Uncle," Joffrey called, but Tyrion was long past listening.

This was not how he'd imagined his reunion with his nephew going.

As the door closed, Joffrey smacked himself in the forehead.

"Lannister is agreeable to me," Robert agreed, with a belch, "but I don't see why you want to appoint your pet maester to Varys' spot. He isn't even a maester."

"Precisely, your Grace," Pycelle spat, his voice ripe with uncharacteristic venom as he glared daggers at the Qyburn fellow, who met his gaze placidly and triumphantly. The Imp barely looked up from where he was seated at the table, swilling the dregs of his wine in his cup. Robert liked a man who could hold his drink, but the way the Imp drank worried him- Robert had drank like that, once or twice or maybe more (probably more). The sort of dark thoughts that such drinking tended to be fueled by- he would not wish it on anyone. Perhaps the Imp had lost a woman as well.

Jon was also uncharacteristically silent; Robert had heard from the kitchen maid (he'd taken her just the night before, a quick fuck to keep his spirits up) that there had been shouting from the Tower of the Hand while he was having his supper. Trouble with the woman, no doubt. Ser Barristan's gaze flicked around the room, the man himself refusing to make eye contact with anyone. Robert glanced at his brothers- they seemed to be the only people actively engaged in the meeting at this point. Apart from Pycelle and his son, that is.

"Pycelle," Robert said, "shut the fuck up. I know you served under Aerys." He hefted his warhammer meaningfully. Since the fire- gods, had it been just the day before?- he'd decided to carry his warhammer everywhere he went. It reminded him of the days gone by, and provided promise- just a bit of promise- that those days gone by weren't really all that lost to him.

Pycelle shut up.

"In any case," Robert continued, still fondling the head of his warhammer thoughtfully, "I doubt we need a Master of Whispers at this point in time. The Seven Kingdoms are at peace, the city is happy- what need should we have for a spymaster? Is this Qyburn fellow- I mean no offense, of course- even capable?"

The Qyburn fellow did look a bit offended, but Joffrey spoke over him. "I'm sure he's not offended, are you, Qyburn?" He glanced across the table- too quick for Robert to notice- and Renly piped up. "Brother," he volunteered, "Qyburn seems as good a man to appoint as any. He served with distinction in the fire."

"That I did," Qyburn said, some measure of pride in his voice. "And before that I birthed quite a few babes in this very city- staved off the bloody flux for a few more-"

"I don't need a healer in the position of Master of Whispers," Robert said. "We already have Pycelle, anyway."

Robert could almost see when Joffrey abruptly changed tactics. The boy had about as much subtlety as a flying brick in normal conversation. "Speaking of which," his son asked, casually, "how is Lord Rosby?"

Pycelle perked up and cut in before Qyburn could speak. "He's dying," he said, plainly. "And nothing the good ex-maester can do will change that." He shot Qyburn another dirty look. Briefly, Robert entertained the possibility of appointing Qyburn Master of Whispers just to watch him and Pycelle snipe at one another, and said so. Jon made no objection, and, just like that, Qyburn was the new Master of Whispers. Pycelle looked even more horrified, if such a thing was possible, and it seemed like it was all Qyburn could do not to gloat. Robert turned his gaze back to his son.

Joffrey had another idea, and, if Robert wasn't mistaken, he believed he knew just what it was.

"...House Stokeworth is gone," Joffrey said, quietly, "and their seat happens to be some distance away from King's Landing. We have a large, Flea-Bottom-shaped hole in the city… why should we rebuild the same old slum in its place?" Robert noticed when Stannis' eyes lit up. "There are hangers-on outside the walls; a vast shanty-town. And now we have the possibility of snapping up not one but two plots of land in King's Landing's immediate vicinity." Joffrey rapped his knuckles on the table. "We could make these beggars and whores productive. Give them land, teach them to farm, and we won't be so reliant on the Reach for food."

"Your pardon, dear nephew," Renly said, lightly, "but the Crownlands are hardly known for good food." He was tapping his fingers on the table in a short staccato rhythm. Robert knew he was affiliated with the Reach- anyone could, from how close he was to Loras Tyrell- and it seemed that he and Joffrey had come to an agreement. Now, normally Robert would be incensed over how things seemed to be going on over his head, behind his back, but today he was in a prolonged good mood. He'd gone out to the yard to hit things with his hammer again- it had been rather refreshing.

Joffrey rolled his eyes. "Fine, then," he drawled. "If you wish to order food from the Reach for the Red Keep, I shan't object- but what of the smallfolk who starve every night? King's Landing is hardly a city of plenty."

Stannis finally spoke. "You would see King's Landing expand. Along with your own dominion."

Joffrey jumped when he spoke- Robert saw Stannis smirk, just a bit- but calmed himself in time. "Of course I would," he retorted stuffily. "I would see another layer of city walls, done up in concrete, enveloping the opposite bank of the Blackwater. I would see the streets paved properly. I would see wood replaced with concrete- reduce the chances of something like yesterday happening again. The city is filled to bursting. I'd just like to relieve some of the pressure." He drummed his fingers on the table again. "Direct control of Rosby and Stokeworth would give us more men, more labour to do all these."

"Or at least you would- if Littlefinger hadn't left the finances of the Crown in such a terrible state."

"What of the finances, Imp?"

"Baelish has borrowed millions from the Iron Bank and spent it all on infrastructure owned in some way by him, and padding the pockets of tax collectors across the Seven Kingdoms. Nothing genuinely productive." The Imp sounded darkly amused; Robert grew more and more concerned. This wasn't like him- he rarely cared much of the internal thoughts of others- but he'd always felt some kinship with the Imp. More so today than usual, though.

"Can you fix it?"

"Am I a short, ugly, stunted thing?" The Imp barked out a laugh. "Of course I can."

At this point, only Joffrey seemed to not notice how uncomfortable the atmosphere in the room had become. He was still glancing out the window distractedly, putting his fingers to his lips and then pulling them away once in a while. "I've a mind to set up a bank-" he began.

"Spare me, nephew," the Imp barked. "I have enough on my plate." He hopped to his feet and waddled out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Joffrey looked up, bewildered.

"What's got him so upset?" he asked.

Robert shook his head.

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Neptune1

Dec 27, 2017

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Neptune1

Neptune1

Disturbingly obsessed with Nilbog

Dec 27, 2017

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#39

Warning for Classic Neptune Megalomania.

The cloaked man bobbed and weaved through King's Landing. The swarm of human traffic pushed and shoved against one another as he made his way with unseemly haste to the sally port by the King's Gate. He'd shaved his whiskers off; the entrance of the dwarf to the city and the death of Lord Baelish had been highly improper, very unexpected… yes, yes, very unexpected, and he did not like unexpected.

He'd rubbed dye into his hair- made it brown and muddy- and with him he had but the clothes on his back… and enough coin to buy Casterly Rock.

The coin was strapped to his chest, to his back, to his thighs, to his elbows. He walked like a fat man, so laden down with coin was he. A carriage trundled by and splashed him with mud; he did not dare turn for fear that Tyrion Lannister's red-cloaks would see his face. And, in any case, coin was coin, filthy or not.

He'd been in his manse when the mob had shown up to Baelish's door- he'd watched along with the others in Baelish's pay, be they merchants or customs sergeants or pursers or even whores, quaking in their own houses as the mob dragged him out and strung him up. They had gone on to the other houses- chased the old owners out- and he had gone too, fled to the Red Keep and found residence in one of the guard towers. Now the manses were empty. He chanced a glance at the manses at the far end of the city.

Yes. Empty. The mob had limited themselves to one or two manses- and the man knew that those manses were the poorer ones- new men, freshly inducted into Baelish's confidences. He pitied them, a bit… their patron gone only a moon after they'd been hired.

"Wenfors," he hissed.

The newly appointed Commander of the King's Gate glanced at him. "Glomys?" he muttered.

The man's face lit up. "Wenfors, my friend!" he whispered. "I have to get out of the city now-"

Wenfors had already flicked his cudgel. It struck Glomys' chest, and there was a distinct jingling sound. Glomys took one, two steps back, white-faced- and then the other gold-cloaks were upon him.

He awoke in the dungeons.

"Got you too, did he," someone grumbled, and Glomys looked up to see his colleagues. "A pretty sight," Renfred continued, eyes black-rimmed from lack of sleep, "all four Keepers of the Keys in the same cell."

"What's going on?" Glomys groaned. His head spun.

"Tyrion Lannister and Joffrey Baratheon happened," Renfred snapped. Their other two colleagues were asleep. "The Prince shut the city gates down; I think he's removed Baelish's creatures from the Watch."

"They're all Baelish's creatures."

"But some are more easily persuaded than others." Renfred shrugged weakly. "Slynt and his cronies are dead. The rest are in Joffrey's pocket now."

Glomy's face went black. "Fucking Wenfors." Then he glanced up again. "And the Imp?"

"New Master of Coin. Those of us who lost our manses- nearly everyone- thrown in the dungeons on suspicions of high treason. Think you'd left by then- they announced it just after you disappeared. He's cleaning house."

"Fuck." Glomys saw a familiar face. "Oi! Lerry!" The gaoler turned. "What the fuck! You're as dirty as us! Why'd the Imp let you go?"

Lerry grinned, exposing ghastly dental work. "Can't remove all of us, or nothing'd get done," he said slowly- Lerry had never been very smart. "Those of us who Baelish paid for silence walk free. Those who acted on his behalf…" he grinned again and nodded at Glomys.

"What's going to happen to us?"

Renfred laughed, eyes like hot coals. "I took the King's jewels with me about an hour before you left, by my reckoning… to bribe the Blackwater fishermen. I was a fool. They caught me at the Dragon Gate. It's the block for me."

Glomys felt like he was falling down a deep, dark chute, like his family's meagre gold mines in the Westerlands.

"...yes, yes… this all seems to be in order." The Braavosi envoy licked his finger and flipped through the ledgers again. "Thousands of names… my word. I'm almost proud- Baelish was a Braavosi, through and through. But he was a fool for thinking to trick the Bank."

"Indeed, Lord Dimittis," Uncle Tyrion said smoothly. "So… is our arrangement amenable to you?"

"Indeed it is," the representative murmured. "As the men arrive, so I shall mark off their names and send the locations of their ill-gotten fortunes to the Bank. And when time has come up I shall send the remainder to the Bank and it shall, one way or another, have its due."

"Rightly said, Lord Dimittis," Uncle Tyrion grunted. They clinked goblets. He snatched the letter he'd drafted up in his hands and hopped off his chair to waddle to the door. "Joffrey!" he called, and soon the Prince himself was at the door, at Tyrion's beck and call. "I need as many copies as you can manage. I'll write the individual names out myself when I come by."

The Prince nodded wordlessly and shut the door behind Tyrion as he made his way back to the chair. The Braavosi envoy was still sitting there, watching him with a mildly amused look in his eyes. "Your pardon," Tyrion volunteered, "but I have a question to ask of you."

"You have rendered unto us a great service, Lord Tyrion. Speak and I shall do my level best to fulfil your request."

"There's… a whore in Braavos, I understand, who speaks the Common Tongue. And she has a daughter…"

"Ah! You speak of the Sailor's Wife." The envoy stroked his beard. "I do not know her myself but a few of the lesser clerks frequent her occasionally. She beds only those that wed her." A snort as he quaffed from his wine. "Queer, that."

I swore to myself- to never fuck a man until I was properly wedded, Tysha whispered, one night many moons ago, back when they'd been together under the stars gazing at the constellations together. And I used to think that was an impossible vow. Her eyes sparkled. Tyrion… my knight in shining armour. You'll protect me until I'm wed, won't you?

"I see," Tyrion managed, and beat a hasty retreat.

You have been convicted of high treason for aiding Lord Petyr Baelish in his efforts to embezzle and destabilize the realm. Your money and your life is forfeit. There is however a way out.

If you come to King's Landing and swear an oath before gods and men to never again commit the crimes you committed, and swear loyalty to the Crown for eternal, your money will be forfeit but you will keep your head.

If you are not in King's Landing by the time the harvest comes in, your name and occupation shall be rendered unto the Iron Bank, and it shall have its due.

Signed

Tyrion Lannister

Master of Coin

Dretich wrung his wrists. "Hard work," he complained.

"Is that why you were booted from the Citadel?" Hans hooted. "Sloth?"

"Fuck off," Dretich retorted. "Why does the Prince want thousands of the same damn letter?"

"So he can send it to a thousand damn people."

"Oh, so that's why there's a blank at the top."

"Were you booted from the Citadel for stupidity?"

Dretich rose from his seat and punched Hans in the nose.

Jaime shut the door behind him; Joffrey was gazing out the window. "Hello, Father," he said, without turning around.

Jaime blinked. Joffrey turned around and jerked (his expression of surprise rang false, though). "Sorry, Uncle Jaime," he corrected himself with a smile, "I thought you were my father." Jaime watched his eyelids slip up and down over his bright green eyes- cold like his father's- and, not for the first time, wondered where all this perceptiveness had come from. He forged ahead nonetheless.

"You didn't tell me that your schemes with the wildfire included the deaths of a few thousand smallfolk," he accused, icily.

"I did not," Joffrey replied, smilingly. Jaime's gorge rose. "A necessary sacrifice. Much like Elia Martell and her children, no?"

"Elia Martell and Rhaenys Targaryen, if what Varys' confession says is true," Jaime corrected, but pulled himself back to the task at hand. "But you should have warned them," he said, reproachfully. "We can still rebuild Flea Bottom. That's thousands of men and women dead."

"It wouldn't have been genuine. People would have suspected." Joffrey spread his hands. "To create, one must first destroy. Speaking of which, who's Tysha?"

Jaime blinked again. "Where did you hear that name from?" he asked weakly.

"Varys' notes."

"I should like very much to take a look at those notes," Jaime muttered.

"They're with Lord Arryn," Joffrey shrugged. "Truth be told, I'm glad they're out of my hands. His papers- they could start a war. Lord Arryn is the oldest of us all- the most experienced. He's best suited to manage the information contained within their pages."

"Good to know that you know your limits."

"Don't be so sure of that," Joffrey japed. "So, Uncle Jaime, who's Tysha? I know Uncle Tyrion married her, and I know that she disappeared shortly thereafter. It was annulled, wasn't it?"

"Aye," Jaime said wistfully. "Married by a drunken septon with pigs for witnesses. They were happy." For a time, his treacherous mind added.

"Why did she go?"

"There are some things that no one should know," Jaime retorted, "and that is one of them. What was done to Tysha was an act of low honour." And I should talk of honour, I should.

Joffrey sighed impatiently. "I know she wasn't a whore," he snarled, and Jaime's heart leapt into his throat. "Tell Uncle Tyrion the truth."

The pieces came together in Jaime's mind then, and the bottom fell out of his stomach. "No wonder why Tyrion was in such a mood," he whispered. "Joffrey- Joffrey- what have you done?"

"I thought I was doing him a mercy," Joffrey growled darkly, "but I knew not that my own uncle had lied to his brother about the truth of the matter." He rose to his feet. "Uncle Tyrion has a mind to travel to Braavos and settle the debts of the Crown personally," he continued. "But his true reason for departing is so that he may find a woman named the Sailor's Wife, and her golden-haired daughter. And he wavers. I have never seen my uncle wavering before." Joffrey met his eyes. "It disquiets me. I regret doing him this mercy."

"Well," Jaime gasped, finding his voice again, as though he was resurfacing for air from the bottom of a deep, deep pool, "I do not regret that mercy." His voice was resolute. "I shall tell him the truth. And we shall see Tyrion do his duty as Master of Coin better than Littlefinger ever could."

Joffrey nodded firmly. "We shall."

Jaime left, his concerns over Joffrey's so-called honour forgotten. A niece, he thought giddily. I have a niece.

"Loths Greenwald," Tyrion called out, almost boredly, as the mob continued to shout and hurl rotten food. Gods, the smallfolk of King's Landing had an almost boundless energy. It might have been amusing, if he hadn't been simply going through the motions for the past few days, preoccupied as he was with thoughts of Tysha. He'd thought he'd been rid of those thoughts, but they were back, and just as dark as they'd been ten years ago.

"You have been convicted for accepting bribes and overcharging customs duties, customs sergeant." Just as he'd done for the past nine-and-twenty men who now found themselves short a head, Tyrion put extra stress on the man's former position. He liked to think of himself as a just man- those in Baelish's pay who had worked for him were given a chance to explain themselves. Those who had been caught in the act, though…

"Have you any last words?"

"M'lord, please don't kill me, I can still be of use-" Greenwald blubbered.

"No last words, then," Tyrion drawled, and made a gesture with his hand. Ilyn Payne's blade flashed.

"DOWN WITH THE MOCKINGBIRD! DOWN WITH THE MOCKINGBIRD!" There were the sparrows again, whipping the crowd up on every street corner, just as they'd been doing since the King's Justice had started to sharpen his blade. After the City Watch had been purged (at Joffrey's behest, regardless of what Lord Renly wished to think), the sparrows had been preaching to the jobless and the homeless. Now the City Watch had more than made up its losses- even better, it had expanded. Tyrion glanced over his shoulder at the festering sore between Rhaenys' Hill and Aegon's Hill; the men freshly inducted into the City Watch were stripped to their waists under the hot sun, performing their first tasks as gold-cloaks: building their new barracks.

Tyrion glanced up from his parchment and motioned for the next prisoner to be brought forward. This one was Ser Oswell Kettleblack, a former servant of Baelish. He had three sons, each of them due to be brought out after their father. All four of them had been factotums for Baelish- Tyrion had cheerfully ignored all conventions of tact and respect and ordered that they be executed one after the other before the smallfolk. Joffrey had liked the idea. And when Joffrey liked the idea, well- the smallfolk liked it too. Lord Renly had only been too happy to comply. His obliging smile had started to take on a vaguely brittle quality.

Not so different from the cat-killing little shit of a few moons prior, I see.

The Keepers of the Keys, the King's Counter, the King's Scales. The officers in charge of all three mints. Harbourmasters, tax farmers, customs sergeants, toll collectors, pursers… Baelish had owned them all. A legion of merchants' sons, lesser lordlings, and a few foreigners among the sorry bunch. House Kettleblack had owned a manse- a small one, but still far better than the rest of the merchants and sailors. Tyrion had been happy to confiscate it from them. By the time this whole "purge" (another term invented by Joffrey- now Tyrion could see where all the hogwash about "ancient Andalos" and "Durran and Lann" came from) was over, he'd be the largest landowner in King's Landing.

"Oswell, Osmund, Osney and Osfryd Kettleblack," Tyrion called out, as the smallfolk jeered (gods, did they ever stop?), "you are no longer considered knights by the Faith." He carefully left out the fact that it was a scruffy sparrow who had proclaimed the verdict while in his cups. "For you have served as officers at the Royal Mint, as tax farmers, as customs sergeants." He shook his head; the crowd roared. "Is there a filthy enterprise which you have not stuck your dirty fingers into?"

"We go to our deaths with our souls clear," Oswell Kettleblack shouted, and received what looked like a shit-stained piece of cloth for his troubles. After that, he limited himself to glaring murderously at his environment. His sons, however, were considerably less restrained… or brave.

The way Ilyn Payne swung his axe as he strode across each of the four men, ending their lives in four swift strokes, was almost jaunty.

For two days Qyburn had rode hard for Castle Stokeworth. He was accompanied by a number of footmen "donated" by Joffrey; Qyburn, himself, travelled at the rear, his caravan pulled by two half-starved mares. He wished he'd focused more on livestock in his research; as things were, he could give a man the strength of twenty; if only he could give these two damned horses the speed of twenty, as well. He neatly ignored the fact that the man, having been granted such strength, would die within a moon for his troubles.

They passed by fields worked by Stokeworth farmers; much of the vast tracts of land were still fallow, unoccupied. Vagrants from Flea Bottom and poor smallfolk- most of whom had been pried from the shantytowns outside King's Landing, which were swiftly being dismantled- had arrived ahead of Qyburn and his party. Already, they were hard at work tilling the fields, working the mines, sowing seeds, bringing the Stokeworth lands to a height of prosperity unheard-of when the House had still been in existence. On the road Qyburn had come across a few families bound for Rosby. Nothing more than the simple allocation of resources, the Prince had said. The presence of ten armed Lannister men for each square quarter-league might have helped, though.

Qyburn had heard a dozen arguments break out over the virtue of the Lannisters. Some contended that they had sacked King's Landing; other pointed out that it had been nearly a dozen years ago, and, moreover, that the children of Tywin Lannister were by no means as brutal as he. Often, the latter view triumphed. Castle Stokeworth came into view as the sun had almost disappeared over the horizon.

The castellan's eyebrows disappeared into his thinning mop of hair as he read the royal writ. "Confiscated?" he asked. "House Stokeworth… at an end?" He looked up disbelievingly. No doubt he had seen the writing on the wall some time back, what with Lollys' continued inability to find a husband willing to tolerate her company and Falyse's inability to bear a male heir despite ten years of marriage. Still, this must have been very sudden. Qyburn could not find it in himself to be sympathetic.

"Can't you read, grey sheep?" Qyburn snarled. "It's late, I'm tired, let us in."

"I'll have to verify this," the maester began, but the Lannister men lifted their hands to their swords and the threat of violence broke him easily enough.

That night, lying in the bed once shared by Falyse Stokeworth and her Byrch husband, Qyburn stared at the ceiling and thought about his assignment- to begin building up a web on par with that of the Spider from Castle Stokeworth. He knew next to nothing about building up a spy network- though, considering his inexperience with livestock… Qyburn rose to his feet and stumbled to his desk to light a candle. Opening his notebook, he dipped his quill in ink and started sketching out the physique of a horse.

In his own private quarters- which led directly down to the dungeons- he had kept the five "little birds" that Varys had sent after him. They had no tongues, so Qyburn had had them write out their truths by candlelight, scratched out onto the stone by their bleeding fingers. They did not resemble orphans as they resembled ghouls, now. The mysterious supplier who had given Varys his little birds would surely be loath to supply him, Qyburn, with more… so he'd just have to make his own.

Moreover, he, like any good grey sheep at the Citadel, had been taught how to make messenger ravens- it was a peculiar process, and he'd never been good at breeding animals. But he could replicate it with enough practice, and, he believed, even better it. Still, he'd found himself a fairly comfortable holdfast to live in, with livestock aplenty- surely no one would notice a few calves gone there, a few crows gone there, a few infants stolen away in the night here again...

Here, Qyburn thought, was the key to accomplishing a difficult task: break it down to what you know, and then work from there. And what did he know? He knew the sinews of the human body; the threshold of pain; how the internal organs burbled and bubbled when subject to pressure; how much force was required to rupture the intestines. He knew how to make a hundred hundred poisons, as well as the cures for all of them. He knew how the Prince's new weapons worked, and the exact ingredients for the pop-powder. All these, and more- things beyond imagination (strange word, that), even- he knew. He was useful, and would remain so until the end of his days.

His other assignment- not bestowed upon him by the King but by the Crown Prince, he who had elevated him above his fellows, and to whom he owed much- was this:

I want you to destroy Castle Stokeworth from the inside.

That ominous missive had been accompanied by diagrams- diagrams of a queer cylindrical structure, about as long as Qyburn was tall. It was to contain a cupful of that pop-powder, and a large lead ball about the size of his head. As Qyburn read through the diagrams, he realized suddenly why there had been so many blacksmiths with him when he'd left King's Landing.

And he smiled.

Tywin Lannister planted his hands on the windowsill and stared at the heads mounted on the spikes studding the walls of Lannisport.

Steal from me, will you? he thought, satisfied. No. You will steal from me only once. Never again.

It was a start; the Crown had been borrowing coin from Casterly Rock for too long. For the first time, he had seized coin, rather than signing away yet another shipment for the mint. He glanced again at the letter on his desk.

Now that that had been taken care of… why was the Imp the Master of Coin? How had that come to pass? He would have to ride for King's Landing soon. He called for Kevan and passed him the Imp's other letter.

"New appointments from the Crown."

"After you executed the old appointments?"

Tywin looked at him.

Kevan sighed, took the letter and shut the door quietly behind him- then he opened it again and placed a letter on his elder brother's desk. "From the Iron Bank. They claim the right to the confiscated accounts of the old appointments."

Tywin Lannister ground his teeth.

"What are we to do with Baelish's men, once they arrived in King's Landing? The tax farmers will have to continue their work, the harbour-masters too, and many more- you've stripped the Seven Kingdoms clean of all of them and called them all to the city." Jon Arryn crooked an eyebrow at Lannister. "Did you think about that when you were calling them all back?"

"Baelish's men can't be trusted handling any portion of the accounts of any part of the kingdom," Joffrey said firmly. "There are, however, hundreds of former maesters-"

"Out of the question," Jon snapped. "I'm not about to allow the Prince to appoint his men to important offices across the Realm before he is King." And then he rounded on him. "And you- I thought you wished to reduce the crowds in King's Landing. Why are you now adding to their numbers?" The Prince glared at him, wide-eyed and wounded, and mumbled something under his breath that might have been an attempt at politely excusing himself before storming out. Think I betrayed you, eh? Jon mused. Welcome to politics, Prince Joffrey. I'm sorry- I know you're a bright young man, but there are limits to the extent to which you are permitted to exercise your power.

"There's little other option," Lannister shrugged.

"Then allow the Lords Paramount to appoint their own."

"I-" Lannister looked vaguely offended. Then he drooped. "I've made the new appointments for the Reach and the Westerlands. I know men there. The rest…" he shrugged. "By all means."

Jon smiled. "My thanks, Master of Coin."

By the time Lannister had gone through the accounts with Jon a second time, it was already growing late outside. Jon tapped his fingers against his desk and rose to his feet on creaky knees to gaze at the sun as it crested over the horizon.

Soon the night would come alive with torches and chants and marching, just as it had been so for the past half-moon. A ring of torches on the edge of that short ugly misshapen grey thing where the Dragonpit had once stood. The Crown Prince, pricking his scarred palms with a needle to draw blood. Jon grimaced.

He had enough on his plate, what with Lysa's obvious instability and his own ongoing internal war over Robert's illegitimacy. His lady wife had been confined to her rooms, and a suitable nanny called from the Eyrie. He didn't trust her to go back to the Eyrie alone; what if she threw herself from the Moon Door? That would raise questions, and the last thing Jon wanted, at this point, was questions.

Questions, questions, questions. Why couldn't people just do as they were told? Jon glanced out at the Prince's new building atop Rhaenys' Hill, and the Flea Bottom barracks- both of them tangible manifestations of Prince Joffrey's influence over the city. Grasping and short and squat, reaching out to envelop all empty land in their path, but with a sufficiently flat roof that it would be simplicity itself to build another floor, and another and another and another… Jon came back to himself.

The Crown Prince may have proved himself worthy in his father's eyes, but suspicions like Jon Arryn's did not go away over the course of a few moons. Nonetheless, Varys' whispers plagued his dreams- had he been so obsessed with the child of his foster-son that he'd ignored Baelish fucking his wife under his very nose? How could he ascertain the worthiness of Joffrey Baratheon when his own son was so sickly House Arryn might die with him? What if- and here Jon's heart skipped a beat, as it was wont to do- what if he, he himself, wasn't worthy in the first place?

If Petyr Baelish- and damn that name, damn the man, damn Lysa for introducing him to Jon in the first place- was Robert Arryn's father- for it was possible, no trueborn son of Jon Arryn's would be as sickly as the boy had been thus far- then Jon would have to have another son. But who would he sire it on? How? Damn him and his self-doubt- age had made him cautious, but Jon no longer had the time to be careful.

If Lysa has dishonoured me, then common laws of honour no longer apply, Jon had resolved, some time back, but had never managed to pluck up the courage to have a whore brought to the Tower of the Hand. Lysa's screaming, for her part, had eventually slowed to a few pitiful moans as she dragged herself about her chambers. Jon sometimes wondered, in his lonesome, dark moments (and there were far more of those, these days), if he ought to kill her and make it look like illness.

He'd been so caught up thinking about Lysa, thinking about the sullen, quaking boy who'd been pulled kicking and screaming from his mother, that he'd let the appointment of Tyrion Lannister and that Qyburn fellow pass without notice- and now he could not be seen to be opposing them, not when he'd expressed acceptance before. Now Qyburn was out of reach- holed up in Castle Stokeworth- and he knew not what he was doing. Tyrion Lannister, at least, had little love for the rest of his family save the Kingslayer… but it was still an unprecedented expansion of Lannister influence at court, even if the youngest Lannister sibling was making noises about leaving for Braavos.

And what of the Prince? Jon would have argued more strenuously against the current course of events, but the Prince had of late been nothing but polite to him and Lord Stannis. He'd willingly given Jon evidence which could be used against him. He'd weeded Baelish and his machinations out, and Lannister or not, anyone else was better than that lying fraud in the position of Master of Coin. He'd given Jon no reason to think ill of him- though that just made Jon more suspicious. No, Jon was starting to think that the Prince had his own ideas- hardly aligned with that of House Lannister- and he was now a player in his own right.

Yes, Jon Arryn decided. We shall see what game the Prince is playing- how he acts when he thinks he has all the pieces. He is no fool- and yet he is but ten. Yes, we shall see who he really is- and then I and Lord Stannis shall act.

"Thank you for this honour, Prince Joffrey," Ser Dontos Hollard burbled. He wiped his nose with his sleeve and sniffed loudly.

I twitched and took one step away from the filthy man. "Of course, Ser Hollard," I muttered. "Welcome to the bosom embrace of the Crown."

"I won't fail you, Prince Joffrey," Hollard continued, as if I hadn't said anything at all. "I'll be the best tax assessor you ever did see. The best."

"And I have no doubt of it," I murmured.

Even if Uncle Tyrion claimed to have complete control over the appointments in the Reach and the Westerlands, it wasn't like every last one of the men he called to their posts would actually turn up- there was a very high margin for error. His "control", such as it was, remained somewhat patchy- I had a sinking feeling that, outside of Lannisport and the ostensibly loyal keeps of Lannister bannermen, there would be quite a few self-appointed "tax farmers" who were no better than bandits.

Let Hoster Tully elevate his cronies. Let Ned Stark gather more power to himself. Let Jon Arryn think he's got the better of me. Let Uncle Renly crowd his financial apparatus with lickspittles with more courage than sense, just like the man himself. Let the Dornish do as they please.

But he forgot the Crownlands. And who was the Lord Paramount of the Crownlands?

Me.

Or, at least, I would be the Lord Paramount in all but name if I were to fill the financial apparatus with my men in time.

Hollard was just the start.

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38

Neptune1

Dec 27, 2017

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Neptune1

Neptune1

Disturbingly obsessed with Nilbog

Dec 28, 2017

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#42

Ah, children! You're back. Here to watch an old man ramble about a civilization which collapsed under the sands so many aeons ago?

Of course, of course. I belittle myself. Today… today, let's talk about New York.

New? Why, of course there was once an Old York. Back then, it was just called York. And all these cities were in Old Andalos- and they were massive, twice as large as King's Landing- bigger than Oldtown and Lannisport and Gulltown all put together. And the number of men that they held within their walls was equally massive indeed. Old York was some distance from New York.

It was from Old York that the Starks came.

Old- yes, the Starks are indeed of the old blood. Of the first men, as some might say. As were Durran Godsgrief and Lann the Clever and Garth Greenhand- the great men of the Age of Heroes. All of Westeros came from Old Andalos- we are kin, you see- First Men and Andals alike.

The Dornish?

What of them? They are not our concern.

York- does it not sound like Stark? York. Stark. The ending is the same. The Starks set off from Old York for Westeros. They landed at King's Landing, right here, along the Blackwater. And then they set off for the North.

In the Red Keep- see that? Upon the Hill of State? The Red Keep- back then it was little more than a crimson cottage- in what would become the Red Keep, the heroes divided Westeros between them. Durran and Lann, as I've told you before, won the Stormlands and the Westerlands- as first pick. Back then, they named King's Landing London.

They are alike, are they not? Landing. London. Yes, say it to yourself. They sound alike, do they not? But- why add "King's" to the beginning?

Well, that's another custom of the Old Andals. They called their great leaders "Kings." Then who were the greatest leaders? Those who were, shall we say, kings of kings? A fantastic question, Daven.

Those were called "Kaisers".

There was another name for Old Andalos, you see, before the first wave of First Men left for Westeros, and before the second wave of Andals left for Westeros too, leaving Old Andalos barren. The Kaisers ruled over Old Andalos- all of Old Andalos- and the Kings, on the other hand, ruled smaller patches of land, like New York- like Paris- like Old York- like Rome. When the Kings sent off their warriors to fight, they docked at the Blackwater, and here, in King's Landing, they left relics of their old cities. And that is why King's Landing is truly the City of Cities.

It is called London, and New York, and Old York besides. Paris, Rome, Moskau, San Francisco, Berlin, Madrid, Constantinople, Istanbul, Beijing, Mumbai, Tokyo, Seoul… every last one of these cities are now burnt-out husks in Old Andalos, but their men live on in each one of you.

Ah, but I digress. Yes, Cassy. What is the other name for Old Andalos?

Well, the Kings ruled over their own fiefdoms. And the Kaisers?

They ruled over the Reich.

And, just as the First Men and the Andals are one people, there was one saying that they had. Repeat after me, children.

Ein Volk. Ein Reich. Ein Kaiser.

Let's say it again, shall we? Louder now- fathers, feel free to join in!

Ein Volk. Ein Reich. Ein Kaiser.

Louder!

EIN VOLK! EIN REICH! EIN KAISER!

Heil!

HEIL!

Victory is ours!

SIEG HEIL!

\- Lecture of the former Maester Horin atop the Hill of Learning

Dec 28, 2017

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#43

Note for the unwary: last bit contains a deus ex machina. If that puts you off... well, I do apologize.

Roys strolled along the quays, glancing at the ramshackle buildings that lined the coast of the Blackwater. Things hadn't changed outside the city walls; how long had it been, since that day, when nearly a thousand had lost their lives? If not for Lord Qyburn…

His men were at his back- among them a few youths from the Red Keep, Lancel Lannister and his brother. Lancel, particularly, was an annoying cunt. Roys enjoyed prodding the little lord. The numbers of Prince Joffrey's Decade had remained constant- of course it had- as had the numbers of the Century. The men of the Century commanded up of ten men each, now, since the Millennium had expanded far past its original thousand-strong mark. Now there were hundreds of boys rushing to join, to partake in the blood rituals atop the Hill of Learning, to hold their torches aloft as a new, grey structure rose in place of the Dragonpit, spreading across the entirety of the hill like a formless stain.

Roys personally had some misgivings over how Prince Joffrey insisted on slicing his palm open every night. After he'd raised his objections, the Prince had told him, dryly, that he appreciated his concern, and promptly switched to using a pin to prick the sensitive scars that crisscrossed both palms. Even despite that, even though he'd also increased the size of the gatherings to a hundred men, he could barely hold a sword, now- not that he seemed to care. In fact, Roys even suspected that Prince Joffrey preferred it this way. A weird one, was the Prince- but he was a good man.

Roys sighed, then, and came back to himself.

"Would you like to start another fire, like the previous moon?" he asked, sweetly, and was rewarded by the merchant flinching. "All wood within and without the city shall go into scaffolding, and what remains to the Royal Fleet. Orders from the King himself. The smallfolk within the city have obeyed; what of those lining the walls, clinging to the walls like molluscs and crabs?" Roys stepped closer. "Are you a crab?"

"N-no, m'lord," the merchant stammered, despite being almost three times his age, and Roys felt, again, the crackling rush of power. "I'll remove my wares and move into Fishmonger's Square. I'm sorry, m'lord."

Roys sighed and waved the man away. "Fishmonger's Square is done, right?"

No one answered.

"Lancel."

"All the wooden stalls have been torn down," Lannister grumbled, sullenly. "Replaced with concrete. Everything else is made from brick. All defects in the brick have been smoothed over already." He unfolded his arms. "Most of the city along the wall has already been converted."

"Excellent, Lancel," Roys replied, pleasantly. "You- Daven, Lorys, Werston- go and tell the shopkeepers in Fishmonger's Square that the merchants are coming." The three boys nodded smartly and ran off, dodging sailors and whores as they slipped and skidded along the wet stone. He had told them some time back that things would be cramped for a while. There had been some unrest, but otherwise, nothing of particular concern.

He glanced sideways at the cloaked men lurking around the city. Boys joined the Millennium, but men joined the City Watch. Past a certain point, Lord Renly had thrown his hands up- Roys had been there to see it (it was one of the perks of his position)- and declared that only the most senior members of the Watch would use the golden cloaks. The rest would just have to make do with yellow cloaks.

At this point, most of the permanent residents of King's Landing were in the City Watch, or in the Millennium. The women, of course, had their own parts to play, but Prince Joffrey had limited himself to instructing them to help their sons, brothers and husbands. They took shifts- sons manned the merchant stalls, while the fathers trained outside the city- and then, when the sons were out training, the fathers took charge of the stalls again. Some of the fishmongers were training with Lord Stannis' fleet- among the captains was Davos Seaworth, who was Daven's uncle.

Roys grimaced as he paused before the alehouse. He hated this part. Raising his gloved fist, he knocked once on the swinging door- and paused, open-mouthed, as it caved in and fell to the floor with a smack.

All conversation inside stopped.

Roys smiled weakly. "I-in the name of the Master of Laws-"

"Fuck off," a hard-looking sailor snarled, rising from his chair and pulling a large, glistening blade out of his belt.

Roys fucked off.

Qyburn clasped his hands behind his back, whistling tunelessly, and raised a hand in greeting as the cart trundled to a stop outside Castle Stokeworth. It had gone down the bumpy road all the way from King's Landing, drawing the gaze of those others on the road. The men upon the cart had taken pains to inform all onlookers that the children within were spies, lest some fool take it into his head to attempt to free them. They had driven by the Stokeworth fields, past the meagre Stokeworth mines (every last bit of iron was now safely ensconced within Castle Stokeworth to fuel his experiments), and now they came to a stop in front of Qyburn.

The children in the cage had been bound to each other with rope, twice over. Some of them had turned out to have some ability to make contortions, so their hands had been bound securely, as well as their arms and their chests, so that they could not breathe fully. As the Prince had instructed. From their necks hung a sign with the word TRAITORdaubed in bright angry Lannister red.

"How did you catch this lot, then?" Qyburn inquired, attempting to make small talk as the children shuffled, empty-eyed, into the depths of Castle Stokeworth.

Anyone entering the castle would have been struck by how empty it was- the maester of the castle, of course, had been fed to Qyburn's machinations some time back, and was now little more than a chunk of gristle with two arms, pierced hundreds of times over with shrapnel from failed prototypes. (Qyburn could feel it- he was getting close. Soon, soon, he'd be able to get the muskets online. And then he'd be able to start work on the Prince's other device.) Yes, the castle was almost completely empty, and the blacksmiths and their apprentices had been told sternly to limit their movements to a certain area in the castle. Those apprentices that strayed beyond Qyburn's prescribed limits were never seen again, and the rest learnt not to ask where they had gone.

"The Prince's Decade," the other man grunted, as their boots trundled over the slippery cobblestone of the staircase, down, down, down into the wet-smelling underbelly of the castle. The other man sniffed, inhaled what might have been the scent of blood, and decided not to comment. "They were exploring the Red Keep. Found a bunch of food and blankets, and some evil-smelling chamber-pots. Little runts had been hiding there since the death of their master."

"They'll have a new master soon enough," Qyburn murmured. He resisted the urge to rub his hands together and cackle. "Well," he finished, raising his volume slightly, "I must thank you for the trouble." He withdrew several silver stags from his pouch, one for each of the men in the party. "New children within the next moon?"

The man shrugged. His eyes flicked from side to side nervously. Even with his torch in hand, the dungeons still smelled wrong. There was blood, yes, and something even more unsettling. It did not to do think on these things. "If the search parties do their job, of course," he tittered, voice uncharacteristically high.

Qyburn held his gaze for a few seconds and nodded gently. "My deepest thanks for your help," he murmured.

The man fled. There might have been a wet groan beside his ear before he took the first step out of the deep, dark dungeons, but surely that was his imagination. As he stepped out into the sunshine and blinked furiously, he glanced up at the battlements and stopped to stare.

Atop the battlements, the banner of House Stokeworth had been removed. In its place was a crimson banner with a yellow-black eye in the centre. That, however, was not what had drawn his eye. No, what had drawn his eye were the ravens.

There were hundreds of them, all perched on the battlements, gazing down at him. Messenger ravens, by his reckoning. His eyesight was sharp, so he could see his eyes, and when he returned to King's Landing he'd tell his compatriots what he had seen. Most of them would accuse him of pulling their leg, but he knew what he'd seen.

Ravens, in Westeros at least, have eyes as black as pitch. But those ravens that he saw on the battlements of Castle Stokeworth had eyes that looked considerably different.

Those eyes were the eyes of a child.

Blue, brown, green, black. Swivelling in their sockets as they turned to follow the man as he stumbled to his cart and his comrades. What intelligence lurked behind those eyes?

Was it human?

Olenna Tyrell sat in her favourite chair and watched over Highgarden.

Fascinating things from the capital. She shifted her body, slightly, and turned to face King's Landing. She fancied she could smell it from here.

Most of the smallfolk in King's Landing were Crownlanders born and bred- few had even set foot outside of the city. But there were a few in the Street of Seeds who had once been from the Reach- some of them were bastards. There was one, Olenna knew, who was the son of a Tyrell cousin. It was a pity that he wasn't legitimate- he was quite a bit smarter than Mace. Still, he had his uses.

Now, after the fire (and tales of the gallant Prince Joffrey were already spreading up and down the Roseroad- it seemed like they had sprang from King's Landing fully-formed, praising the Baratheons and Lannisters to the heavens), Garth had managed to elbow his way into the hall on the day of Varys' trial. He'd watched as the King had bashed Varys' head in personally. That was just like Robert Baratheon, whom Olenna had only met once or twice, in passing. Better suited to lead armies than rule a kingdom.

The Prince was another matter, though.

As a matter of fact, Olenna had received a few complaints from the Citadel. The tales she was hearing- torches aloft, ceremonies and daggers and all that pointless "Heil"ing- did match with what they were saying. Well, if the Prince wanted to craft his own queer way of communication, it wasn't like there had been no such thing before- look at the Greens and the Blacks. They'd had their own secret ways, all of them playing at being conspirators when their actions were obvious to anyone with a brain.

It was what he used to back-up this ceremony that displeased Olenna, and likely displeased the Citadel as well. She resented Garth Greenhand being shunted to a subordinate role behind Durran Godsgrief and Lann the Clever, and it was likely that a fair chunk of the rest of Westeros might feel the same about their own pet heroes. Glancing below the parapet to where carts and carts of wheat were bound for King's Landing, a hand was raised in farewell. It never hurt to be kind to the smallfolk from time to time- Olenna reserved all her vitriol for her family and other nobles, in any case.

She'd facilitated the diplomatic protest from Oldtown against the "lies" being peddled by the Prince's ex-maesters, and rallied those Houses closely bound to the Tyrells to add their seals to the petition. It was a chance to present a show of solidarity before the throne. Perhaps a reminder of how reliant King's Landing was on food grown in the Reach might be in order as well… It would not do to allow the heir to the Iron Throne to rest easy. Olenna blinked, kneaded the bridge of her nose, and turned.

"Willas."

"Grandmother." Her grandson hobbled to her side, face tight, and did not resist when she pulled him down to sit beside her. "I have received a raven from Lord Rosby."

In truth, the new Lord Rosby had been born a Frey, from the loins of old rotting Walder Frey like so many of his relatives at the Twins. Still, from what little Olenna had read, young Lord Olyvar was possessed of some basic sense of honour. His letters, at least, did not give off the stench that Walder Frey's correspondence carried. She waved her hand. "What does it say?"

"The Crown has been making moves to absorb the Rosby lands. There are men from King's Landing building rival inns to Old Stone Bridge."

"Ah, that- that thing."

"Concrete."

"Yes- do get Garth the Gross and his bastards to start working on it. If King's Landing has this… this concrete. It will not do for Highgarden to fall behind." Olenna paused. "How fast are these new inns rising up?"

"Over the course of a single moon," Willas murmured. "The City Watch has swollen to some ten thousand men-"

"-as I know."

"-as you know," Willas continued, with a twitch of his lips and a tilt of his head, "and there's likely far more waiting in the wings. From his castle, Lord Olyvar says there are men in yellow cloaks marching back and forth along the Rosby Road. Every day their numbers grow and shrink, grow and shrink. He dares not raise his levies."

"He should not. Rosby is no kin of ours, but I shall not have his blood on our hands."

"As you say." Willas shuffled his papers. "And Lady Hayford..."

"What of her?"

"She is with child again."

"Let us all pray that this one comes to term."

"She sends her apologies- she'd like to withhold some of her grain from King's Landing to make a statement, but as things stand there have been men from Flea Bottom taking up residence on her lands, learning how to farm, worming their way in."

"The fire was very convenient, wasn't it?" Olenna murmured.

Willas shot her a sharp look.

I knocked on the door.

"Enter."

Jon Arryn looked rather tired as I crept in, seated myself, and started fiddling with my fingernails almost immediately. I mean- he always looked tired, but this time he looked especially tired. "My lord," I began. "You wished to see me?"

"You have been appointing your own men to positions in the Crownlands."

I smacked my lips, which had suddenly become dry, and glanced at the falcon tapestries lining the chambers of the Hand. Such artistry! Such skill!

"What I mean to say is, you have been persuading Tyrion Lannister to appoint those disgraced maesters in your employ to positions formerly occupied by Baelish's men, who are now yours." Arryn drummed his fingers on his desk. "I must say, I expected Lannister to be more strong-willed. Everyone else in that House is far more assertive than he."

Maybe because he's still moulting over Tysha? "Er," I stammered, and then swallowed and tried again. "I-"

"I have no problem with that."

"Wha-?"

Arryn might have smiled at me doing a passable imitation of the fish on the Tully sigil, but it was gone quickly. "Prince Joffrey, mayhaps we have begun our relationship on the wrong foot." He exhaled. "There are, you see, limits to the amount of power I am willing to allow you to ascend to. If you were to rise too high and too fast, there are many at court- and elsewhere too, I'd wager- who would see it as some form of overreach. I would limit your influence to the Crownlands- a more local region, shall we say. Where you can learn how to rule, and later apply your lessons to all Westeros."

Oh, so training wheels- of a sort. Mentor-mentee relationships I could handle- ass-kissing was my forte. "Um, my thanks, Lord Arryn."

"'Tis a thankless task, Prince Joffrey. Do not thank me until all your men are in place. That's when the real work begins." Arryn hefted a silvery pebble in his hand- his own method of holding his fidgeting in check. "Politics is all about understanding how people work. As much as you might be, shall we say, a leader of men, I'm not quite convinced that you are able to handle individual nobles."

Of course that was what a master diplomat would say. "Oh, naturally, Lord Arryn. I look forward to your tutelage." I tilted my head. "How is your son, may I ask?"

Arryn's face was stone. Belatedly, I remembered that I'd penned down in Varys' notes that Sweetrobin was Baelish's bastard. "Ah," I murmured delicately. "Um. I think-"

"You know equally well the accusations that Varys levelled against you and your siblings, I trust," Arryn informed me, lightly. "Shall we discuss the Rosby lands, instead?"

"Yes, yes."

Doran sat in the gardens, Oberyn by his side.

"Let me go to Pentos," the Red Viper urged. "If Aegon truly lives on in Pentos with Jon Connington, he will want to know that there are those in Westeros that yet remember him."

Doran thought.

He did not know if Robert Baratheon was aware of his own collusion with the last remaining Targaryens; truth be told, the revelation about Aegon's survival- if it even was Aegon- had caught him wrong-footed. If he did know, then there would be agents watching for Oberyn's departure. Perhaps the Old Falcon had counselled patience- perhaps they still knew nothing. He had to be cautious. Not like Oberyn- Oberyn, who was wild and furious and had almost brought Dorne to war with the rest of Westeros. Doran would not allow such a thing to happen. Not without preparation.

And yet… Doran's stomach churned. Elia's son. His nephew. He had to know. If, as Joffrey Baratheon had proclaimed, the confession had been seized from Varys' private possessions, than what reason had the eunuch to lie? And yet… might it have been a fabrication? Mayhaps it was all a fabrication, to tempt Oberyn into overstepping and giving the Throne a reason to go to war. In which case, it must not have been fabricated by the Old Falcon- he would work against war in all its forms till the day he died. Their conversation in the Water Gardens some ten name-days hence had been proof of that.

Which left… well. The Lannisters? The Prince? From what he'd heard, the Prince thought himself a leader of men. He'd had the foresight to dig up all the wildfire caches- curse the name of the Mad King- and he'd mustered himself a pretty army in King's Landing. Word had it that he was deploying them elsewhere, along the Rosby Road. Mayhaps it was the Lannisters. Mayhaps Tywin Lannister hoped to finish Dorne off once and for all.

"Find Aegon," Doran finally croaked, and Oberyn's eyes glinted with some indefinable emotion. "Find the boy who claims to be our nephew-"

"-oh, Doran, trust me. He must be." Oberyn's fist was clenched. "We shall have our revenge."

The Prince's goblet shattered in his hand. Glass and wine splattered across Pycelle's desk- he pulled his papers clear with a yelp, just in time. Joffrey Baratheon, his hair some shades darker than it had been a moon ago, was on his feet in a moment. As always, he wore a black-yellow doublet with the Baratheon stag prominently emblazoned on his chest- but if one knew where to look, there was always the telltale lining of Lannister colours along his cloak, at his neck, swirling around his legs. His green eyes glistened with intent.

"The Reach presumes to order me around."

Pycelle cleared his throat. "Prince Joffrey..."

"The Reach presumes to order me around." The Prince ran a hand through his hair- another mannerism he'd picked up after his tenth name-day- and stared out the window. King's Landing, short nearly fifty thousand smallfolk (bound for Rosby, Stokeworth and Hayford lands), wasn't expecting another batch of Baelish's men for a while, but work continued on the nameless building that stood where the Dragonpit had once crouched. Word had gone out that it was being called the Tower. "After all I've done for them… they presume to order me around."

Pycelle glanced at the scrap of parchment in his hands. His conscience twinged. He'd resisted chastising the Prince for mangling history to such a heinous extent, but… well. Since his colleagues at the Citadel saw fit to rope at least ten different major Reachlords into their confidence- mayhaps he'd better attempt to calm the Prince. "Prince Joffrey," he volunteered, querulously, "it would be best if you were to follow the Reach, for now-"

"DO YOU TAKE ME FOR A FOOL?"

The Prince's thick lips had thinned of late- he pouted much less- and now they were pulled back to expose glistening white teeth, and a tongue that poked and prodded most unnervingly. His hair was close-cropped, closer to his scalp, and he ran his hand through it again as Pycelle shrank back.

"I will follow the Reach," he continued, after blinking a few times, and then the murderous intent in his eyes was gone. "I will ensure that the men I have engaged stop spreading vile lies-" his lips twitched- "-and I shall send them off."

Oh. Pycelle blinked. This was better than he'd expected. The annoying men who were patently unworthy of being maesters (they lacked the mental fortitude to become maesters, after all) would be herded out of King's Landing and off to become mendicants- as was their lot in life, after all- fantastic, fantastic, fantastic. When he wrote back to the Citadel to inform them of the Prince's unofficial response, he'd make sure to include that bit of good news.

"Oh, yes," the Prince said absently, as his yellow-red handkerchief mopped up the remainder of the spillage (what a well-mannered lad, Pycelle thought to himself), "those- er- undeserving ex-maesters-"

"They were never maesters," Pycelle cut in.

"-non-maesters, then," Prince Joffrey bulldozed on, "I can't keep referring to them as non-maesters, now, can I?" He paused. "How does Misters sound? Misters Qyburn, Horin and Dretich."

"Far be it from me to advise you, Prince Joffrey." Pycelle sagged in his seat as the Prince shut the door gently behind him. A crisis had been averted- if the Prince had chosen to diverge from Oldtown, there would have been consequences.

The man waited until Illyrio was done speaking before he provided his reply.

"The Faceless Men shall not undertake to kill any of the names you have mentioned."

Illyrio blinked. ...is this how negotiations with the Faceless Men go? Bartering like fishwives at market? "Is my price not high enough?" He spread his hands. Outside, Pentos beckoned- the gardens at his manse were filled to bursting with life. A faint breeze blew from the window to ghost across his sweaty back. "They killed my bosom friend." One of the most capable men I have ever known. My operative in King's Landing. Gods, Varys- things will be harder to manage without you reporting back to me. "A life for a life. Is that not just?"

"The Faceless Men do not believe in justice," murmured the Faceless Man. His visage was plain and tranquil- it had not shifted since he'd been allowed into Illyrio's manse, since the guards had left the vast chamber, since Illyrio had begun speaking. "The Faceless Men believe in death and the certitude of it all. And none shall receive it."

Illyrio sat back in his chair. "...why?" One of the arms of his chair shattered; he glanced at his left hand and began pulling the splinters out indifferently. "From those of my friend's operatives who made it across the Narrow Sea, it was the Prince who arranged his death." Varys was a fool to record his notes on paper. Or was that truly his notes? And… if so… how did Joffrey Baratheon gain such information, if not through Varys? "Are you not capable of killing Princes?"

"It is not that your offer is insufficient," the Faceless Man continued sedately. "It is that the order is unable to fulfil such a request."

"Why?"

The Beggar Prince had left Illyrio's manse to bring his sister around the city… at Illyrio's behest. The mention of the Faceless Man had been enough to bring a hungry look to the young man's eyes. Illyrio pulled another splinter from his hand, ignoring the pain, and thumped his other fist on his chair. "Damn it, if you came all the way here, surely you have some reason."

The Faceless Man tilted his head, as if listening for instructions, and then nodded gently to himself. "The reason is that Joffrey Baratheon is protected."

"Protected," Illyrio repeated. Of course he's protected. What is a mere magister to a Prince? "Protected by who? Who is this other party who is shielding him from you? I can offer double the price." He probably couldn't, but it was worth getting the measure of his enemy. Who knows, mayhaps that enemy had supplied the Prince- and whoever else was working through him- with Varys' valuable whispers. The Varys he'd known would never have been so stupid as to record his knowledge down on paper. Mayhaps he had grown forgetful in his old age? No.

The Faceless Man's eyes glinted. "I am no longer a member of the order."

"No?" Illyrio queried agreeably. "Then I suppose the order shall not mind if I take my due for the insult that has been dealt to me." He rose to his feet swiftly and grasped the man by the neck. "I told you," he hissed, "that Varys was my bosom friend. Robert Baratheon smashed his skull in; Joffrey Baratheon dragged him to his death. King's Landing ended him. You will not permit my revenge?"

There were no other ways to avenge Varys. Beyond this, Illyrio would… well… he'd just have to come up with another way to learn about what was going on in Westeros. Only if he knew what was going on in Westeros could he find a way to organize the last Targaryens to his sway. As Illyrio gave the man's neck one last squeeze- savouring the sound as the bones in his trunk creaked and shattered- he closed his eyes, exhaled, and let the body drop. He was just about to open the doors to call the guards in when he heard a noise from behind him.

"I am no longer a member of the order, bravo," hissed the dead man from behind him, and Illyrio turned, eyes wide, as the man picked himself up from where he'd been sprawled on the ground. His neck gave off a wet shlurping sound as it shifted back together, and there was blood running from his nose and his eyes, flowing into his loose clothing and staining it red. Illyrio stared as the blood resolved into water- clear and free-flowing and unending, a torrent of water. "I found another god to serve."

After a while, Illyrio found his voice. A bird chirped outside. "...Joffrey Baratheon is protected by a god," he whispered, and then repeated it, louder. "'Tis a mummer's tale. There are few gods left that anyone truly believes in."

"I used to believe in one god," the dead man chortled, as he eased himself onto the chair. Water dripped from his fingernails, from his mouth, from his ears. "The Many-Faced God. The god of death." He ran his hands over Illyrio's expensive table. "Then, one night, I looked at the stars… and something spoke to me, from between the stars, those empty black plains."

Illyrio did not move from where he was standing by the door. And yet… he did not call for guards. Later, he would wonder why he had not.

"That god, which spoke to me and drew me into his embrace, he spoke to me from between the stars. He's been here- among us- all this while- and even gods can make agreements. Even gods can have wars." There was water streaming from the man's mouth and eyes and nose, and even a thin stream from his hairline, but where it hit the floor it disappeared. Illyrio stared at those points where the liquid met the floor- but stopped when the pain in his skull grew too strong. "And then… and then he appeared to me in his true form. And I was bound to be his messenger." The messenger spread his arms. "Come, bravo. Illyrio Mopatis. Kill me."

Illyrio remained where he was.

"Do not give Daenerys Targaryen those dragon eggs."

Illyrio's eyes flickered. Then the man sighed, softly- and then, before Illyrio's eyes, Serra stood, her flesh free of grey, her eyes bright with life, pale golden hair streaked with silver. She simpered at him, removed her shift and exposed herself to his hungry eyes in full.

Then the grey started to spread. It started at her fingertips. To Illyrio's horror, it was almost like watching her die at four times the speed. Like watching a corpse rot. It opened up old wounds. He was across the floor in a moment, unheeding of the potential perils of touching a person infected with the grey plague. His fists were meaty, and his substantial weight was behind them as he delivered a blow to Serra's stomach, then her shoulders and arms, breaking her kneecaps, fracturing her spine. Illyrio got down on his knees, Serra melting away to reveal the dead man, who smiled up at him. His teeth were falling away into the gaping void of his mouth- Illyrio tore his gaze away from the stars shining from his open throat and met his placid, watery eyes. "Who is this god?" he whispered. "Who is responsible for my misfortune?"

The man smiled and began to chant. Illyrio's brow furrowed; he dipped his head labouriously to hear the words spurting from the dead man's mouth.

"IA, IA," the man was chanting, repeatedly, and as Illyrio's ear almost touched his lips he let loose a vast horrid torrent of syllables which no human tongue should produce. The syllables hit a chord within Illyrio's depths- one which he'd thought was gone- buried under years of scheming and eating and fucking- the warm beating child's heart in each of us that fears the depths of the ocean and the deep earthy caverns of the earth- and he pulled himself away, crawling on his hands and knees like a babe, falling backward on his fat backside. There was a roaring in his ears- and, over that, the unholy eldritch ululations of hundreds upon thousands, crying and screaming for a blind mad god...

And then the cold flesh beneath Illyrio's bulk turned to water. Illyrio watched, head spinning, as pale clear liquid splattered across his face, across his fine clothing, across his lounge and delicacies and carpets. Mutely, slowly, he pulled himself to his feet and planted one fat hand on the bannister.

There was a trickle of water leaking from his nostril.

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Neptune1

Dec 28, 2017

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Neptune1

Disturbingly obsessed with Nilbog

Dec 29, 2017

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#49

Eddard Locke shut his coin pouch gently and placed it in his cloak. Then he turned to look over White Harbour, his cloak swishing gently in the chilly wind. His grey eyes, sadder than they'd ever been, cast over the riches he'd accumulated over the years; fine Myrish carpets, peach brandy from Tyrosh, a pyramid of golden dragons which he'd assembled the night before. Impulsively, he grabbed a flask of that peace brandy and emptied it into his mouth. It was some time before he opened his eyes again; swaying on his feet, Eddard stumbled out the door and down from the tower.

His shoes clicked gently along the cobblestones of orderly White Harbour as he walked. Eddard drank in the spectacle- the smell of the sea, cold and tangy, wet fish on his tongue, the whitewashed stone beneath his fingertips. He very much doubted that he would set foot in this city again.

Eddard was a far-distant cousin of the current Lord in Oldcastle; he had been nothing when he had arrived in White Harbour. It was only after he had met Petyr Baelish- back when he was barely a man grown- that he had started to make something of himself. And now it was all gone. Eddard blinked hard; he had been named for the Stark in Winterfell, a man who was as removed from him as Eddard was removed from the street urchins who begged outside his door for scraps. But now- now- well, he was far closer to those urchins than he'd thought. His throat filled with bile.

"So the traitor comes," Marlon Manderly japed, as Eddard glanced over the city again, as his footsteps brought him irrevocably towards the ship chartered for him. "Is there anything else on your back save these fine fabrics?" He rubbed Eddard's sleeve between thumb and forefinger. "The Iron Bank will not be pleased if there is..."

"Nothing," Eddard replied shortly. "All my wealth is in my chambers- and lest you forget, Ser Manderly, none of it will be left to you. All of it will go back to Essos- where it belongs." He paused, thought for a moment, and spat into the churning waters. "Not a groat will be left to House Manderly. And good riddance."

Manderly smiled wide. "Fuck you too, Locke," he said cheerfully, with the look of a man who knows he's won, and bumped into him with his pauldron when he passed. Locke continued along the inner harbour. He raised his head to gaze at the towers- one every hundred yards- how many times had he ascended their stairs, conducting his daily business? And now he would never see White Harbour again. Ten name-days had come and gone… had it truly been that long? Eddard stopped.

"Roger," he murmured.

The bastard looked up at him; he'd risen further than Eddard had, from the son of a camp follower to the crown-appointed harbourmaster. Now, with Baelish's death, he was nothing. "Eddard," he grinned, weakly, and coughed. He was shivering; he'd stepped out in nothing more than his smallclothes and a bit of cloth to keep himself modest. "Have a wonderful trip."

"Do not do this," Eddard said.

"I will not see my riches in another's hands," Roger whispered, in lieu of a straight answer, "and I will not go to King's Landing to grovel before a halfman." He hefted the millstone in his hands; it was secured to his neck by a rope. "Fare thee well, customs sergeant."

He leaned forwards. The waters took him.

Eddard boarded the ship and watched as the Seal Rock faded into the distance… and, with it, the city that had sheltered him for the past two decades.

His coin brought him as far as Duskendale.

On the ship, there were two other tax assessors from the Manderlys' vassals. They had not spoken much- but they had been called from the crowd, alongside Eddard, by a yellow-cloaked man who called them to assemble before him. He had recorded their names down and bade them to stay at the Seven Swords- he'd have need of them on the morrow.

"He leaves once a week," the innkeeper had told him, once he'd entered into the warm, cozy confines of the Seven Swords. "Comes back one week later. You're an unlucky sod, m'boy; just as he was about to leave. Twice a moon he comes, and you caught him just in time!" The crowd was rowdy; more than a few of the men making merry were bound for the yellow-cloak.

Eddard stared into his beer.

They walked on foot, the yellow-cloak cantering ahead on his horse. Eddard had never been on a road in all his years- not since he'd arrived in White Harbour. By the end of the day, his feet were swollen, throbbing. And there were other things- strange things- he'd never seen them before. They seemed to be inns, and certainly that was what the yellow-cloak said, to their party of about fifty men, but it was like no inn Eddard had ever noticed.

They were short and squat, hastily made, grey and uneven to the touch- and freezing. They slept on beds of straw- the yellow-cloaks included. "No featherbeds for you, traitors," the yellow-cloaks had spat, but without malice. In any case, the men had already been cowed. The first day after leaving Duskendale, in the morning they had stripped the fifty of them naked in a forest clearing and given them simple rags to wear. Their fine clothing was burnt; those who resisted, those who raged- they were beaten. Eddard watched all this emptily. At night, he dreamt of White Harbour.

On the second day they continued to trudge along the Rosby road. The tracks carved into the path by centuries and centuries of horses and men ground under his shoes, which were the only pieces of their previous lives that the yellow-cloaks had allowed them to keep in order to allow them to walk at a fast enough pace. They passed other parties of men- fifty apiece, by the reckoning of another man in Eddard's group- all trudging along the same road. On the way to King's Landing.

Songs were sung. The Rains of Castamere. Bards popped up along the route and walked side by side with them, humming and ululating in a most strange manner, and from time to time Eddard joined in. There was warmth in his chest, when they sang- the yellow-cloaks permitted him to spread his arms and lay them over the shoulders of the other men, wearing nothing but rags, brought low from the height of riches to the depths of poverty.

They were nothing now. And King's Landing beckoned in the distance.

Sometimes the yellow-cloaks bade them march- and march they did, on and on and on, to the point of exhaustion. They were made to move in unison- to turn when they said "turn"- to run when they said "run"- to form up and jab forward with branches and stones. Sometimes they met up with other parties of men, fifty each, again- on that interminable road to King's Landing. They drilled together. Eddard started to think of this walk, this long, long trek- as something of a training regime. Exercise. His mind was clear of thoughts of money like it had never been in years. The yellow-cloaks and the grey inns would provide the same gruel, day in day out, the same treatment, day in day out. No unpredictability.

Night after night the yellow-cloaks told them of King's Landing, likened it to a city of opportunity. The belly of a smith's forge. From King's Landing, they were told, they would emerge new men, their sins forgiven. The yellow-cloaks had a different analogy for each of them- a different way to arouse their own hopes, to threaten and cajole and beckon. They were told of the wise King and his honourable Hand and his brothers, as different as night and day and yet both respectable and mighty in their own way.

But above all they were told of the Prince.

After some time they emerged into the sunlight. Eddard shielded his eyes against the glare- it had been day after day of marching, walking, and every night there was an inn to sleep in, without fail. He turned to his right, and there was a castle and a village. A small castle, and a village filled with simple huts- but there were labourers there, sweltering in the sun, moving slabs of grey, and with a start Eddard realized that those slabs of grey were the slabs that made up the inns that lined the Rosby road. "Go," the yellow-cloak barked, and Eddard was moving before the command consciously registered.

They were given bricks- Eddard saw that they were bricks, hard to the touch and wet all around- and they laid the bricks one over another, precisely and carefully. Together they built the first floor of a house within the first day. Eddard saw, out of the corner of his eye, the yellow-cloak who handled his party grinning widely as his fellows frowned and delivered coin into his waiting hands. It was later explained to him that the yellow-cloaks had been directed to train their men- their battalions- as best as they could- and those who performed the best would gain a small reward- nothing more than a few stags- but a reward nonetheless.

That night they made their beds in the village outside the castle, inside the little house- the inn, really- that they had built. Eddard sat on the cooling edge of the walls, under the cold light of the moon, and asked his comrade, a small weaselly man named Walder, whose castle that was. Perwyn had a way with words- he was the main spokesperson of their band of fifty for the yellow-cloaks.

"Why," Perwyn said, "that's Rosby's castle." He pointed at the archers outside the walls, clustered around their campfires, shooting flaming arrows into the air boredly. Once in a while, there was a squawk from above, and a dull thump audible from afar. "Day in day out they're there, shooting down ravens that come and go. There's a few Ministers who send their own ravens in place, with their own messages."

"Ministers?"

Perwyn shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine."

The smallfolk went out into the fields with them, to sow the seeds, to tend to the animals. Sometimes there were but the fifty of them; other times there were more from elsewhere, a hundred, two hundred, three hundred. Rosby's castle stood sullenly on the horizon- the yellow-cloaks forbade the smallfolk from delivering food to those within. "Sooner or later," Eddard had overheard, "the cunt has give in. He has no choice. There is not enough food. Either he surrenders or he starves."

They moved on the morrow.

When they arrived at what the yellow-cloaks said was their last stop before King's Landing, their heads were shaven. One of the yellow-cloaks wielded the blade expertly- their hair came off, sometimes spotted with blood, but by the end they were indistinguishable from each other. That last stop was a monstrous inn- a huge grey toad squatting on both sides of the road, and always growing.

Every day for the next half-moon they would leave the inn and work on expanding it. And every night they would retire to the warmth of that inn, hundreds of men crammed against one another, and sing the same song- one voice from many throats- with the yellow-cloaks and the gap-toothed women who had come, they said, from what had once been Flea Bottom.

"''Tis a song about New York," he was told. "Where our Andal and First Men ancestors came from." The bard told them of New York and Old Andalos- of Durran Godsgrief and Lann the Clever- and one of the men bellowed, "Why did the maesters not teach us of these?"

Of course, that man had the luxury of a castle education. He, at least, had been taught by a maester. But Eddard and others knew no better. The bard told him, "They did not teach you of these because the Citadel forbids it. It is their will. Even the King must obey."

"Fuck the Citadel," one of the yellow-cloaks declared, eyes burning. "They cannot stop the truth."

"Fuck the Citadel," the murmur went around the room, growing louder and louder with each repetition.

On the first night Eddard had glanced around, confused, as the men clapped in unison- the same beat- four claps, solid and hard- as they sang along. There were ceramic jugs in their hands, steaming containers of ale, and they thumped them on the tables sporadically. Gradually, the fifty newcomers were folded into the greater multitude. They clapped. They sang. Brotherhood.

But you're still the one port where I'd happily drown

And oh! Eddard shouted, unaware that there was a smile spreading across his face, unheeding of nothing but the warmness in his chest. Never mind that the words made little enough sense. They struck a chord in his heart, the longing for home. White Harbour. He dreamt of White Harbour, and its marble mermaids and their whale oil. Fat Wyman Manderly being carried in a litter, Eddard straining his shoulders beneath his vast bulk. The stone beneath his fingertips. Fish on his tongue.

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Later, they would take the men out, and cut their palms with a piece of glass washed in boiled water. "A ritual from Old Andalos," they told him, solemnly, and when they mentioned Old Andalos Eddard's mind flashed immediately to the treacherous maesters at the Citadel, still addled from the alcohol, a connection forever forged.

But that would come later.

And OH!

Eddard jumped as the men around him banged their jugs on the table, the percussive beat making his ears ring. They glanced back at him- beckoned- and, quickly, he joined in the rhythm. It was a primordial sound, the sound of drums- echoing in his heart, echoing in his mind. Did the peasant levies ever enjoy a thing so honest as this? he asked himself. Did they feel as strong a brotherhood as this?

MAYHAPS AERYS TOLD YOU TRUE! The men spat it from their throats, hatred bubbling up in their throats easily, their minds loosened by the drink. The innkeepers from Flea Bottom had been provided with hemp and told to mix it into the ale in a very precise fashion. They had obeyed, of course.

AND THERE'S NEVER BE ANYONE THERE FOR YOU!

AND YOU'LL ALWAYS BE ALONE!

BUT MAYHAPS HE'S WRONG! They linked their arms, prompted by the innkeepers, and some of the yellow-cloaks skulking along the edge of the inn hid a smile.

AND MAYHAPS I'M RIGHT!

AND JUST MAYHAPS HE'S WRONG!

MAYHAPS HE'S WRONG!

AND MAYHAPS I'M RIGHT!

AND IF SO, IS THERE?

One of the men pumped his fist in the air and shouted, "Fuck Aerys!" The yellow-cloaks seized on the exclamation. "Heil!"

"Heil!" the men roared, easily suggestible, their minds malleable, broken down after days and days of marching and drilling, broken down to nothing by Tyrion Lannister's decree and built up back again, reminded ceaselessly of the nobility of the greatness of the Crown and the might of King's Landing.

On the seventh day they marched on King's Landing.

Myrcella knocked on the door.

"Enter," Joffrey called, without looking up, and smiled at her as she stood shyly in the doorway, her hands behind her back. "Oh, it's you." He stood up, strode over to her; Myrcella's smile grew fixed on her face as he loomed over her, clearly relishing the difference in height. "I haven't seen you in some time." His smile faded. "Unlike Mother." A deep, affected sigh. "She does love to fawn over me so."

"You never seemed to mislike it," Myrcella murmured.

Joffrey glanced at her, and for one brief, terrible moment, Myrcella might have almost flinched- but he did not. Instead, he laughed. Myrcella relaxed; it had taken her some time, but she'd finally learnt to relax around her brother. It had taken three moons, by her reckoning. "I never did, did I?" he mused, almost to himself. "Yes. I did not. That name-day was the day I decided to grow up. And grow up I have."

Her brother had changed since his name-day. Even Tommen, who was simple and kind and pure unlike anyone else in the city, even Tommen could tell. "Are you well? From the fire?" She attempted an expression of concern. "Even Father was affected by the corpses. He said he hadn't seen so much death since… well, since before he was King."

Joffrey shrugged. "Death is a natural part of life," he remarked. "Without death, there is no life." He put an arm around her shoulders, pushing down the hem of her gown and laying his hand over her bare shoulder. "Come with me to the window, sister."

Myrcella obeyed.

There were people crowding in front of the skeleton of the concrete barracks that Joffrey was raising, where Flea Bottom had once stood. It was a monstrous complex, with two different training fields- one of which was already occupied by men marching back and forth, doing drills in the noonday sun. And the men in front of the barracks, squinting up at where the Dragonpit had once been- those were Baelish's men, stripped of their wealth and status, sent to King's Landing to atone. "See that?" Joffrey murmured into her hair. "A great barracks- the greatest in Westeros. Raised from concrete. My concrete."

"It must have cost a lot," Myrcella volunteered.

"They do it of their own will," Joffrey replied. "They do it out of respect, out of love, out of fear. They obey because they must. They have no choice. What is the duty of the smallfolk? Obedience. The second? Obedience. The third?" His lips pulled back. "Obedience."

Like me, Myrcella did not say. Joffrey still frightened her, but it was not the visceral, violent fear of yesteryear. She could not pinpoint the terror, but mayhaps it lay in how his fingers ghosted over her bare shoulder and caressed the small of her back. "Your hair is darker," she said, in an attempt to spark conversation.

"So it is," Joffrey muttered. He reached into his drawer and drew out a vial. "Give this to Tommen. When you wash your hair, mix a drop of this into your hair. Tell Tommen to do the same." He paused. "It will make your hair like mine. Darker."

"It's not quite Baratheon black," Myrcella said. "It looks… more like soil." Or mud.

"A dirty blonde," Joffrey volunteered, and, when Myrcella said nothing, he pressed a thumb to her cheek and pulled it along her cheekbone. "Gradual. Incremental. Shade by shade, our hair will darken to Baratheon black, and then none will doubt my claim to the throne."

"Why would they doubt?" Myrcella whispered.

Joffrey shrugged. "Perhaps they want the throne for themselves. Perhaps they truly believe the lies which they have told themselves." He curled Myrcella's fingers around the vial and plucked her embroidery from her slack fingers. "What's this?"

"A fancy," Myrcella mumbled. "It's nothing."

It was a lion- or was it a stag? It was hard to tell. It certainly had a lion's mane, much like the lion on the Lannister coat of arms- but its lower body was black, with a short, stubby tail, and hooves. The lion's head sprouted antlers.

"It's beautiful," Joffrey observed. Myrcella could not suppress the blush. Joffrey glanced at her, his green eyes opaque and considering. "You know," he began, "the ancient Andals had many creatures like this. They called them chimerae."

Please, stop talking about the ancient Andals, Myrcella wanted to scream. Only the smallfolk believe that. Please.

"The chimerae were the merger of two creatures, both of them great in their own right," Joffrey continued. "So, why not? Your stitching is commendable; I shall consider it. A merger of the Houses Baratheon and Lannister." He stuck his nose into her hair one more time and inhaled deeply; his fingers clenched, briefly, around her braid, and then loosened. The stitching, he tossed to his desk; Myrcella watched it land upside down.

"Run back to Mother," he told her, and Myrcella backed away until she reached the door. And then she walked away quickly.

King's Landing finally came into view. Eddard marched in his column, in sync, one-two-one-two, the rhythm buried in his mind, the sun beating on his face. They slowed as the gates opened for him- atop the gate, there were figures with their cloaks shimmering golden in the sun. And beside the gate, there were men in red cloaks, their arms glittering in the glare.

"At ease," there came a shout, and Eddard cast his gaze about. The scene was much like that at Rosby, save writ large; men clambered on teetering wooden scaffolding, laying bricks and smearing grey across structures that reached for the sky like stubby fingers straining towards an unreachable goal. And, even further off, protecting the fields and fields of grey, there were men laying a rudimentary line of bricks. A second layer of walls. King's Landing was a hive of activity.

The shadow of the gates blocked out Eddard's field of vision as they marched under, and for a very brief moment he was overcome with awe. Then the moment passed, and they were bound for the centre of the city. He passed shops- little, dirty shops, their imperfections smoothed over, children and women grown watching them pass. There was a lone figure waiting atop a thin grey stage in the distance- growing bigger with every step they took.

"Drink!" A cup of ale was pressed into his hands, and Eddard drank, wiped his mouth, and passed it on. The men in front were holding their hands aloft, palms crisscrossed by thin white lines, and Eddard raised his hand as well.

"MEN OF KING'S LANDING!"

"HEIL!"

The figure atop the thin grey stage- a squat, rectangular structure that might have been a barracks, it was too early to tell- had 'round his shoulders a crimson cloak, flapping in the wind. Gold glistened on his brow; his slim frame was enveloped in black. After raising his right hand in response to the roar, he raised his hands to his mouth and shouted again. Eddard remembered White Harbour; briefly, he was jolted out of the rapturous reception that welcomed the Prince. It took him a while to return to that state.

"YOU ARE THE FUTURE OF WESTEROS! THE MASTERS OF YOUR OWN FATES! YOU WILL FIGHT AGAINST TRAITORS AND REBELS! AGAINST ENEMIES FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC!"

"HEIL BARATHEON! HEIL BARATHEON!"

The Prince might have been smiling. "THE FUTURE! ALL WESTEROS IS YOURS TO COMMAND- YOU HAVE BUT TO REACH OUT AND TAKE IT! COME WITH ME- AND I SHALL RETURN YOU YOUR HONOUR!"

"HEIL! HEIL!"

"VICTORY SHALL BE OURS!"

"SIEG HEIL!"

As the Prince continued to speak, Eddard glanced around, a white face alone in a crowd. His ears were filled with the mad, insensate bayings of a beast… a beast that smells blood.

Extract from The Golden Wedding: Songs from the Wedding of Joffrey Baratheon and Margaery Tyrell, published by Duskendale Press, 400AC

NEW YORK, I LOVE YOU BUT YOU'RE BRINGING ME DOWN [followed by THE RAINS OF CASTAMERE]

Folklore claims that this song was sung by the Andal warriors as they journeyed across the Narrow Sea from Old Andalos to Westeros. A large number of warriors in the first contingents, including Durran Godsgrief and Lann the Clever, supposedly came from the great city of New York. They were fleeing the tyranny of the "Lord Mayor" Bloomberg I, who had declared himself King and attempted to weed out "traitors" with his Metropolitans.

The song was later edited by King Joffrey I to include anti-Targaryen propaganda, as seen by the mention of "Aerys" in the later portions of the song.

New York, I love you

But you're bringing me down (x2)

Like a rat in a cage

Pulling minimum wage

New York, I love you

But you're bringing me down

New York, you're safer

And you're wasting my time

Our records all show

You are filthy but fine

But they shuttered your stores

When you opened the doors

To the men who grew bored

Once they'd run out of crime

New York, you're perfect

Don't please don't change a thing

Your mild billionaire mayor's

Now convinced he's a king

So our rivals collect

I mean all disrespect

In the thousands of bars

I'd once dreamt I would drink

New York, I love you

But you're freaking me out

There's a ton of the twist

But we're fresh out of shout

Like a death in the hall

That you hear through your wall

New York, I love you

But you're freaking me out

New York, I love you

But you're bringing me down (x2)

Like a death of the heart

Jesus, where do I start?

But you're still the one pool

Where I'd happily drown

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For kids that think it still exists

Yes, for those who think it still exists

Mayhaps I'm wrong

And mayhaps you're right

Mayhaps I'm wrong

And mayhaps you're right

Mayhaps you're right

Mayhaps I'm wrong

And just mayhaps you're right

And oh..

Mayhaps Aerys told you true

And there'll never be anyone there for you

And you'll always be alone

But mayhaps he's wrong

And mayhaps I'm right

And just mayhaps he's wrong

Mayhaps he's wrong

And mayhaps I'm right

And if so, is there?

Support Staff (MCU AU)

It's Chins All The Way Down (Don Carlos SI)

Grunnings Drills, Inc. (Harry Potter AU)

Blog Posts from Westeros (ASOIAF)

Dreadful (ASOIAF SI)

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Neptune1

Dec 29, 2017

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Neptune1

Neptune1

Disturbingly obsessed with Nilbog

Dec 29, 2017

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#51

Yinko said:

Myrcella seems a bit too insightful for being so young. Knowing that a sadist frightens her is one thing, knowing that the reformed sadist, now a quiet and careful sociopath, does is a totally different thing, especially since she should be fairly relieved to have the old Joffrey gone.

True, true. Once I've put up all the updates I should be able to process comments from both sides of the pond.

Mother came to me while I was in the bath. Again. I had the foresight to scrub my body raw with the soap first; there were bubbles and foam everywhere. Little Joffrey stood to attention again; I met Mother's gaze and smiled obediently when she planted a kiss on my wet curls.

"You're a man grown," she murmured appraisingly. "My beautiful lion."

"Honestly, Mother," I pouted (it was annoying how easy it was to pout with Joffrey's face), "you're just like Lady Arryn."

My mother stiffened indignantly from where she was stroking my darkening hair. "I am not," she sniffed. "And besides, Lady Arryn hardly has a title to her name. I am the Queen."

I sighed. "Uncle Jaime came to dinner with a cut on his cheek. Was it one of his sworn brothers?"

Mother's hand tightened on my curls, and I winced. She let go abruptly and rose to her feet. "No," she said, distantly, "it wasn't." And then she came back to herself with an eruption of hatred so palpable I could almost smell its sulfurous stench. "It was the Imp. Them fooling around again." A sigh. "Men."

"Your brother." The windows were hinged- wooden plates fixed together at the moment. King's Landing was settling in for the night outside. The city had lost much of its feverish, cramped feeling in the previous months.

She laughed nastily. "Would that he wasn't."

"And Master of Coin, too," I observed mildly. "Won't Lord Tywin be pleased?"

"One never knows with the Imp. My father would prefer himself in the Imp's position- or, even better, him in Lord Arryn's place." My mother stroked my hair sadly. "Why did you colour your hair so?"

I favoured her with a lopsided smile. "What do you mean, Mother? My hair has begun darkening naturally."

She ignored my joke. "Myrcella has done the same thing to her hair. Why would you..."

"Why would I not desire to look like my father? He is my father, isn't he?"

Mother had gone very still.

"We found many, many files in Flea Bottom. One of these files involved the Lannisters. I gave them all up to Jon Arryn."

Her hand tightened on my hair at the second sentence, and screwed into a fist at the third. "Why did you give it to Jon Arryn?" she hissed. I made a soft mewling noise of pain and she let go of my hair with a mumbled apology, gazing at the black strands in her palm. They remained golden at the roots.

I laughed. "Pray be at peace, Mother. Varys' files indicated that Robert Arryn is not trueborn, either."

My mother's breath hitched, but she forged on. "That does not make up for rendering potential evidence of your illegitimacy unto the Hand of the King."

"With what can he prove illegitimacy?" I spread my hands. "Lord Arryn has enough to worry about. He knows not the veracity of Varys' own information, and can but doubt himself every step of the way. Your lord husband himself declared me his son in the sight of gods and men. Besides, the King has but one male bastard in King's Landing. That bastard has been taken care of."

Her eyes refocused and she goggled at me. "You?"

"Me."

Her face broke into a smile; it was radiant. "My beautiful, beautiful son."

"We would do well to be cautious," I warned her. "Accusations of illegitimacy or not, I have begun darkening my hair in steps. It would be good if Myrcella and Tommen did the same." I raised an eyebrow. "They say that blonde hair darkens after birth… for me, ten name-days too late. For Myrcella and Tommen, though..."

A shadow loomed over his desk. Tyrion glanced up. "Your Grace," he muttered.

Robert Baratheon looked concerned as he seated his huge frame opposite Tyrion. Or perhaps he was merely drunk, as usual. "Are you well?"

"As well as can be, your Grace," Tyrion mumbled.

"Call me Robert."

"Very well. As well as can be, Robert."

The King laughed. "You're as sharp-tongued as your sister, Imp."

"I thank you for the compliment."

"Did you lose a woman?"

His question- a throwaway one- hit Tyrion like a punch to the gut. He hadn't whored since he'd had that conversation with Joffrey. Too many memories. He remembered that sickening, sun-drenched day by the Sunset Sea. His father had been there, as well as a whole army of Lannister men. He remembered how Tysha had felt as he'd slid into her, how her eyes regarded him coldly, dispassionately, as he thrust one last time inside her, weeping all the while like a baby- as though everything that had made her her had been fucked out by the red-cloaks who even then watched him do his business with lazy grins on their faces. His father had been the only one of the lot who wasn't smiling.

But Tywin Lannister had been smiling, at the end of the whole ordeal. He'd been the one to shove the golden dragon into Tysha's unresisting hand, and spit in her face.

A Lannister is worth more. Take it, girl.

"...Lannister? Lannister!"

The King was shaking his shoulders. "Wake up, man!" He exhaled sharply. "All these years whoring and drinking with you, and you never told me." His gaze softened as Tyrion sighed, long and gustily. Both men sat back in their own chairs. "Did she die in childbed?"

"She may as well be dead to me." Tyrion's eyes were dull, unfocused. He didn't feel like he had any tears left to shed.

"She cheat on you?"

Tyrion laughed bleakly. "With a whole barrack of Lannister men."

Robert Baratheon snarled. "A whore, then."

"I thought I loved her," Tyrion continued, as though he hadn't heard anything. "I thought she loved me. We were married by a drunken septon with pigs as witnesses. I gave her a cottage by the Sunset Sea. We were happy for half a moon." Then again, I've been Master of Coin for half a moon.

"Where is she now?"

"I never saw her again after the Lannister men had their way with her."

"Had their way-" The fat man's face went slack with horror.

Tyrion exposed his teeth. "My father paid her a stag for every man that fucked her, and he had me fuck her last. For me, he gave her a gold dragon. Then he dragged me back to Casterly Rock and had me confined to my chambers for a moon."

Robert Baratheon slammed his fist on the table. "Whore or not," he said dangerously, face stormy, "Tywin Lannister had no right."

"Can you imagine what happened afterwards?" Tyrion asked plaintively. "Lying in the fluids of at least a hundred men in a desolate cottage, coins scattered around her. Picking herself up, painfully, bit by bit-"

"Damn it, man, snap out of it!" Robert Baratheon took Tyrion's empty goblet and batted his face with it, once, and then Tyrion finally returned to reality with that ringing blow to the head. He turned his stare to the King. Robert sat down.

"I lost a woman, too," Robert said, quietly. "I loved her. I still do. Be glad that she is still alive." He sighed. "It does not do well to dwell on things that might have been. Look where I ended up!" His laughter was humourless. "You are many times the man your father is, if what I have been told by the Kingslayer is any indication. Even my Queen, on the rare occasions that she speaks to me without a sneer on her face, tells me the same about her father. I say you deserve Casterly Rock, and will gladly sign a document forcing Lannister to declare you his heir- and damn everything else." He laid one huge hand on Tyrion's narrow shoulders. "You have done well as Master of Coin. If you should need a rest- you need but tell me. To hell with Jon, to hell with Stannis, to hell with Renly, to hell with Joffrey- they all have their own needs, their own desires. But they don't understand what you've gone through."

"...thank you, your Grace."

"Call me Robert." Robert Baratheon rumbled, and for a heartbeat he was young again. "And you are welcome."

"ON YOUR LEFT," King Robert bawled, belched massively, and took another swig from his wineskin. Julius Wendwater cringed from the stink of his breath, almost swaying in the saddle; I wrapped one long arm around his shoulders. "Just bear with it a bit more," I repeated. Lord Wendwater took another look at me, his face red, and nodded grimly. I clapped him on the shoulder, one last time, and forced my horse backwards.

The Kingswood loomed around us. My father drank with one hand, shoving the wineskin into Lancel Lannister's trembling hands at sporadic intervals. His other hand was wrapped tight around his warhammer, which he had taken to swinging around madly. I dug my heels into the warm, throbbing mass of brown flesh beneath me, forcing my mount back, back, back, consciously mimicking a driver parking his car. Slowly, bit by bit, with a caution forged by falling off my mount one too many times, I fell back to Stannis Baratheon's side.

The Master of Ships had curled his lip for the past few hours as the new men of the City Watch sweated and shouted in the Kingswood south of the capital, his short-fingered lieutenant at his side. Davos Seaworth was, unsurprisingly, more pleasant to me than Stannis was. He at least nodded at me as I leaned in towards my uncle. I think all his sons had made it into my Century, actually… but that's neither here nor there.

"Uncle Stannis," I murmured, mouth a few inches from his ear, "I think we should talk about the Tyrells."

That, at least, got his attention. His head snapped towards me; my mount scuffed its hooves in the dirt and took one, two, three steps back. Fat Bob continued to play at war, while his son and his brother passed to the back of the hunting party in as inconspicuous a manner as they could.

"'Tis about the betrothal." He glanced about; Seaworth and a few other men closed ranks around us and remained at a respectful distance. I motioned with my hand; they moved far back enough, and then I muttered, "If you can hear me, raise your hand." None of them raised their hands; if they could all hear me but chose not to, then, well, what could I do? I'd have to make sure I said nothing too incriminating. Nothing too bloodthirsty.

"Aye." The betrothal, of course, hadn't been made just yet- but there was a growing number of Reach-lords in the capital, holding private audiences with Fat Bob, Arryn and Uncle Renly, plying the King with Arbor gold. Uncle Stannis wasn't an idiot. "Uncle Renly intends to marry me to Margaery Tyrell."

"As I have gathered." Stannis met my gaze stonily. "Save your courtly words. What do you want?"

My lips twisted. A bird called, in the distance, as thousands of men crossed wooden swords in the Kingswood, fighting a mock-battle at the behest of Fat Bob, nearly a hundred courtiers spread out unevenly across the forest. It seemed to go on and on and on, the same mossy tree trunks for miles around, dappled sunlight dancing over the forest floor. "How would you like to see the Reach cast down?"

His eyes flickered- I caught a glimpse of burning hatred (heh, an apt metaphor, burning)- and then he ground his teeth for a bit. I found a shiver running up and down my back- I'd found myself squeeing over landing in a fictional world for a few days, and wised up not long afterward. But the feeling came back from time to time. Stannis grinding his teeth had previously been something that I'd only read about in books. Now I could see it happening before me.

"Enough games."

"My apologies, Uncle." I leaned in. "Uncle Renly came to me first with the intention of wedding me to the girl. I needed allies- and you weren't very forthcoming-" -his frown deepened- "-so I bargained that gift away to him in exchange for aid. Now I have King's Landing and an ever-increasing range of influence, and Uncle Renly? Uncle Renly has the Stormlands and Loras Tyrell's cock."

His ears may as well have pricked up when I mentioned the Stormlands. So what if he liked to harp on and on about how Storm's End was his right? In the end, he felt wronged; honour and law and justice had nothing to do with it when feelings were involved. The forest passed overhead. "You wish to back out of the agreement."

"An agreement that was never put to paper. It was an informal agreement; a favour here and there. He hasn't held up his end of the bargain. I want out."

Pure lies, but Stannis could easily toss those aside when Storm's End lay before him. "You want to accuse him of treason."

"No," I said, delicately, "I want you in Storm's End, among your rightful vassals, and Uncle Renly out of the Stormlands. We all know he's with the Tyrells." I made a show of deep thought. "Mayhaps you could keep Dragonstone."

"You want my co-operation for the future."

"I want cordial relations," I replied. "Of all the men on the Small Council, you alone seem to mislike me." I dipped my head. "What have I done to make you hate me so, Uncle Stannis? I assumed it was my agreement with Uncle Renly, and so I'm taking steps to annul that. With you. Uncle Renly is frivolous. You deserve to be Lord Paramount, and Uncle Renly? Uncle Renly should continue as the Master of Laws, but that's all he deserves."

Let my father pat himself on the back and imagine Baratheon solidarity for now.

I could see him pondering whether to bring this to Arryn and Fat Bob. Eventually, whichever conclusion he reached, he didn't share it with me. "...you overstep, nephew."

"I overstep," I murmured, and avoided his eyes. Sucking up had always been one of my talents. "My deepest apologies, Uncle. Whatever will win me your trust… I shall do it. I know not how I have insulted you-"

"Do. Not."

"My apologies."

My mount left hoofprints in the dirt path as I returned to my father's side. Maybe I'd been too extreme in my attempt to woo Stannis to my side; in any case, I'd made the first overtures. It was on him to respond.

"...the Ministers haven't been insulting Dorne for half a moon."

"It's not an insult, it's just that you have to keep dismissing the Rhoynar as separate from the Andals and the First Men- hold, you've stopped?"

"Father," Robert Arryn whined. "It's cold."

Fuck off, you malformed little shit, I thought. "I suppose you're busy, Lord Arryn."

The Hand laughed at that, and briefly looked as though he was surprised to have laughed at all. "Yes- that I am. That I am. I'm always busy." He traced his hands over the weathered stone that lined the Red Keep. Men with a falcon stitched to their breast kept a respectful distance. If I worried about spies all the time, I'd never get anything done. "Good, then. I've spilled much ink and spent much spit to bring the Dornish over to the side of the King. This peace is hard-won."

"I suppose it's only hard-won for as long as the continent is at peace. Once war starts-"

"I've seen too much war, and yet it is all too often an inevitability." Arryn sighed. Sweetrobin clutched his father's hand with a gaunt, clawed grip. "All we can hope is to stave it off until we pass."

"Not until our children pass? Or our grandchildren's grandchildren pass?"

"If you trust them to maintain amity."

I bit my lip. "I fear that such amity will be very hard to maintain."

"Oh?"

"More files from Varys- recovered from the foundations of the barracks. Slightly charred." I handed Arryn a few scraps of paper- he squinted at it, glanced at me, and received the creamy parchment with a grunt of thanks. His blue eyes- penetrating as always- went very, very still. I made a face at Sweetrobin; he shrieked, shuddered violently, and sat hard on his ass on the cold stone. His hand slipped from his father's; Jon Arryn ignored his son's cries of distress.

"A marriage contract," he whispered. "This- Prince Joffrey, this is treason."

"So it is," I said blandly. Arryn shot me a glance; then, he stowed the paper away into his cloak quickly. It was a gesture that would be easily missed by anyone following at a distance. Honestly, even with King's Landing in my hands, everyone was still paranoid. Myself included. And I'd hoped that stuffing the city with loyal men might make me feel better! "So," Arryn continued, coaxing his son to his feet, treason apparently forgotten (he was probably going to think on it later, like all old men when faced with a major problem), "how is your so-called 'press' coming along?"

"The smiths say they could do it," I answered, thinking back to the black rage that had come over me as they had delivered their halting verdict. "There's only one issue- the ink might bleed through the paper. We don't have a lot of ink- certainly not so much as to generate such a vast output of copies. And the parchment we have is singularly unsuited to the course." Guess I'll have to beg, borrow or steal from across the Narrow Sea. Probably when Tyrion's feeling up to it.

"Not all of your bright ideas are feasible," Arryn replied mildly. "I received a raven from Qyburn at Stokeworth."

I blinked. Qyburn was supposed to be loyal to me. What was he doing talking to Arryn-

"He says you've got Rosby surrounded." Arryn dipped his head to tell Robert to stop squirming. "Prince Joffrey, I understand the replacement of House Stokeworth, given its extinction and Qyburn's evident blood relation… but, well, Rosby's ward is his heir." Qyburn had faked the genealogy reports; Pycelle had been induced to claim their authenticity. But back to the problem at hand.

"Frey is not his heir," I barely restrained myself from spitting. "He's the son of a shrivelled up-jumped vassal of Lord Tully. The Late Lord has claims to half of Westeros through his children; we can't afford to let him command an ever-growing patchwork web of holdings by virtue of his loins."

"Honourable words," Arryn returned calmly, "if it weren't for the fact that you've been obviously expanding your power by seizing Castle Stokeworth."

"It was just one castle-"

"One castle with substantial tracts of land and two sworn houses. That's plenty powerful enough."

"I-"

"And your contempt for Lord Frey is considerably at odds with Qyburn's report, which tells me that you've been in contact with the Crossing… discussing leveraging his sons and their claims to control, as you say, 'half of Westeros'."

There was a rushing sound in my ears. Qyburn, I thought to myself, numbly, you serve me. You serve me and not this wrinkled excuse of a Hand.

"Mayhaps when you're older, Prince Joffrey, you might think to try this again. But- I believe we only just before were speaking on the benefits of peace. Your plotting and scheming will most definitely not lead to peace, Prince Joffrey- quite the opposite. Stop. Leave Olyvar Rosby to his castle and his vassals. I'll speak with him."

I couldn't think on my feet, and perhaps this might explain my hasty agreement and my fuming retreat.

I should've kept Lysa alive so she could poison the old fucker.

When I returned to my room, I sat and I thought. And then I went to ride.

Learning how to rule wasn't what it was cracked out to be.

I spat one more time to get the taste of human and animal waste out of my mouth, dumped a bucket of water over my head, and went to sit with my father. One of the workers offered another bucket; I grabbed it with a grunt of thanks and brought it to my father, who upended it over his shit-splattered rat's nest of hair wordlessly.

"Underground sewers," I muttered. "Underground. Build the pipes with some superior fucking material. Gods, what a fucking shitshow."

"In more ways than one," my father grunted. "Have you heard the songs the bards are singing about you? About the fire?"

"I, uh, I might have."

Fat Bob snorted and slapped me on the shoulder; I avoided flinching. "I like you, boy. Didn't know you were so sneaky before. You used to be like a fucking lion, you know? Roaring around like your mother. Cutting up animals. Vicious little shit."

"Shit," I muttered, glancing at the specks of brown still stubbornly affixed to my hands, and the two of us started laughing maniacally. Why was Fat Bob trying to pull a father-son bonding session while we were sorting out the sewers? The sun beat down on our bare backs; the (inner) walls of King's Landing loomed in the distance. In front of us, the outer walls- built from concrete, this time, and nearly twenty layers deep- came up to my knee. It was still rather impressive nonetheless, considering that construction had started two months ago.

"As I was saying," King Robert continued, wheezing, "not so much like a lion anymore. They say the seed is strong, you know? Baratheons, we have issue, they always come out with a bit of that fury in them. It's a good thing your hair started coming in black; I don't need more Lannisters in King's Landing." He ruffled my hair; I cringed as his large, warm, stinky hand scraped my scalp. "Tommen and Myrcella, well, they don't have the fury, but that's just as well; they're dear children, aren't they?"

"Yes, Father. Very dear."

"I don't want to hear about you tormenting them again." My father's voice was suddenly quiet, stable, and bereft of humour.

"Um. Yes."

"Good, good!" He laughed again, grabbed a wineskin from Lancel's hands, and downed it in one long gulp. "Now, well, Baratheons have always been mighty warriors. You're a decent swordsman… alright with the warhammer… best rider I've seen in a while… worst strategist I've ever met… but gods, your talent lies in whispering with the rest of them! A plotter, through and through- I'm lucky I've got one of you on my side. Talents, you know. Managing men."

A backhanded compliment, but okay. I squinted as something glinted in the distance. A knight? Yes, yes… two black warhammers crossed on a white-blue cross. House Rykker of Duskendale. What were they doing here? I followed the knight with my eyes as his horse cantered over piles of concrete and sweating labourers, shying away from the particularly filthy. His helmet was on; I could not see his expression, but I supposed it was one of extreme disgust. "My thanks, Father."

"Don't mention it." He took another drink and belched. "Gods, I'm going to miss the old tourney grounds. Using Flea Bottom to build royal barges to move us across the Blackwater- genius, m'boy, genius. New tourney grounds are going to be more magnificent than ever." He seemed perturbed for a beat. "Shame about the tourneys, though."

"What about the tourneys, Father?" The knight made his way to the gate and held a brief conversation with the men of the City Watch. One of the men raised his arm and pointed at myself and Father. The knight's head turned; I imagined an expression of incomprehension and incredulousness.

"The Imp said we haven't the money. One tourney a month could be put to repaying the Iron Bank." Father belched. "He's right. Besides, one more drinking buddy is always welcome..." A pensive look came over his face. "Another man who knows something of loss..."

"A knight of House Rykker!" I shouted, waving my hand, and the knight jerked. "Hail, Ser!"

"Heil!" A few workmen roared, and the knight fell off his horse. My father started laughing from behind me, his guffaws rolling across the flat ground of the industrial suburbs rising outside the city. "Help him," I told some of the labourers, and they hastened to obey; the knight pulled his helmet off, face red, and took a deep breath. His face was very expressive. "Prince… Joffrey?"

"Not a cruel jape, Ser," I told him, dumping another bucket over my head. "Sewer works, you see."

He probably didn't. "Is, er, King Robert..."

"King Robert isn't interested," Father shouted, from behind me, and upended another wineskin into his mouth.

"What are you here for?" I inquired, turning on my heel and sauntering back to the city gates. The knight froze behind me, cast his head about, and then gripped the muzzle of his horse, leading it back to the castle. He probably didn't want to risk his mount milling about with the smallfolk.

"Er, Lord Rykker requests a charter for Duskendale-"

"Done," I replied, as agreeably as I could manage. "Wonder why it took you so long to ask. I suppose that's another of Aerys' legacy, eh?"

"D-done?"

"Of course. Done. I'll speak to the Hand. Duskendale shall have its charter. One caveat: Crown gets nine-tenths of the income from trade going to Duskendale."

The knight looked a bit like a fish, come to think of it.

"You're supposed to negotiate it down," I volunteered helpfully.

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Neptune1

Dec 29, 2017

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Disturbingly obsessed with Nilbog

Jan 3, 2018

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#60

And lest we forget...

Sometimes I wondered if Planetos would ever suffer global warming.

I mean, no one had ever discovered if it was even round. Westeros and the western bits of Essos were pretty much the only bits of civilization that were decently rational. You had stuff like the city of Carcosa… some odd place called Asshai… weird, Lovecraftian shit going on. Odd natural formations which I was rather sure were impossible on regular old Earth. Generally, most of the stuff I'd pillaged from Pycelle's library went "there's definitely some crazy shit out there, but most definitely not over here, fortunately for us". Considering that, I had to conclude that it was unlikely that technology here would ever reach a point where it began to seriously degrade the environment. In any case, if such a thing came to pass, well, Westeros was already gearing up for a vast fall in temperatures. A longer, warmer summer would probably be appreciated.

In view of that, engaging in large-scale deforestation of the Kingswood wasn't such a bad idea.

Still...

"Plant the seeds on the other end of the Kingswood," I told the workers. They hastened to obey. Wiping my brow, I turned back to my task and continued whacking the tree trunk before me with my axe. It wasn't a bad axe… could be better, but it wasn't that bad. Granted, if the tree didn't fall within the next hour, I'd start to blame the axe, but… for now, well, I was willing to accept some degree of culpability.

My eleventh birthday had come and gone without much fanfare. Uncle Tyrion's revamp of the financial system- mostly weeding out the corrupt- had settled through, and soon money was flowing back in quite nicely. Granted, Crown incomes could have been higher. Then again, back when they'd been higher, under Baelish, they had been raised artificially, unsustainably. It was all we could do to make sure that the whole thing didn't collapse around our ears.

When I say "we" I mean Uncle Tyrion and Jon Arryn, with a bit of help from me.

Mother had whined about the cut in incomes- she spent almost as much as Fat Bob- but I'd spoken up in favour of the spending cuts. If everything continued on schedule, Westeros would be debt-free by the time I was thirteen. Of course, this was in the assumption that the Iron Bank didn't concoct some ridiculous scheme to keep us in debt to them.

"So you say you've used water wheels for processing grain and working metal already," I continued, speaking directly to Lord Wendwater.

The Wendwater- the river, not the noble house- actually lay more to the east of the Kingswood, but House Wendwater had long claimed the whole thing for themselves. Aegon had put paid to that notion, of course, but the position of Warden of the Kingswood had been all but reserved for House Wendwater over the past few centuries. Julius Wendwater was about Fat Bob's age, but rather browner and rather more wrinkled. A bit like the trees in the Kingswood, come to think of it.

"Yes," he replied, slightly stiffly. I suppose it was because he was surrounded by woodcutters hard at work clearing the land. "Along the Wendwater, that is."

"You didn't propose using any of this technology along the Blackwater."

"The Mad King considered it," Wendwater said, carefully, "but he went to the extremes there, as he did for everything. You've heard of the marble city on the other bank of the Blackwater?" I nodded, wiped sweat from my brow with the back of my hand, and swung the axe into the trunk again. "Well, he wanted to build a dozen bridges and a dozen water-wheels."

"Funny," I commented, half to myself, "I'm thinking of a dozen bridges and a dozen water wheels too."

"Your grandsire cut the whole plan to pieces, root and stem," Wendwater murmured. "I suppose he took issue with the marble… not so much with the bridges and the water-wheels. Those were actually reasonable, but-" He shrugged noncommittally. Further criticism of Tywin Lannister was unwarranted. I supposed that since I looked less Lannister, he felt more free to speak out against my family. Fair enough.

"Well, I think it's a great idea."

Wendwater brightened visibly.

"A dozen water-wheels, for grain and for iron-working. Would you mind handling the endeavour?"

"I can think of no greater honour, Prince Joffrey."

"Good man." I clapped him on the shoulder. "I'll speak to Lord Arryn, shall I?"

"How was it?"

"I fell off my horse in front of King Robert."

Renfred Rykker, Lord of Duskendale, guffawed loudly. His cousin attempted valiantly not to respond, but his face was far too expressive to prevent such an occurrence. Instead, he sipped from his wine and devoted his attentions to his papers until his cousin stopped giggling. The ceiling of the Dun Fort towered above both of them.

"But you got the charter."

"The Prince drives a hard bargain."

"The Prince?"

"Yes, Prince Joffrey."

"He's eleven."

Cousin Rykker shrugged. "Crown's expanded the amount of money we need to give them from the port."

"Wasn't four-tenths enough?"

"They increased it to six-tenths."

"Oh, by the Seven." Schadenfreude forgotten, Renfred buried his face in his hands. Now it was Cousin Rykker's turn to be amused, though it was tinged with a fair amount of chagrin.

"They plied me with whores!"

"You're a knight!"

"That's not all, though-"

"How is that not all?"

"We'll have to quarter two-hundred-fifty of their men in the city. They'll train on their own, keep order-"

"That's tyranny!"

"Not at all," Cousin Rykker replied nonchalantly. "We get a bunch of free labour too. A free militia! Apparently, King Robert likes to play war with them."

"Fat Robert," Renfred moaned. "Then why do they want to be quartered in Duskendale, of all places?"

"They could maintain order." Cousin Rykker rapped the table with his knuckles. "Think about it! They get coin from King's Landing and then they spend it on our own whores. They spend it at market. They spend it on silks and whatnot. In the end, Renfred, I'll wager at least a fifth of what we pay will come back into our coffers." He took another sip of wine and groped the backside of a maid in passing before dragging himself back to the conversation. "Think about it- they're nominally in service to the King, but- come on, if they stay in Duskendale long enough they could become more loyal to us instead. A free militia, right?"

Renfred buried his face in his hands again. Cousin Rykker took another sip of wine and took advantage of the lull in conversation to finish up his suckling pig. Lady Rykker, who had sat through the conversation in silence, reached out for a serving maid and had her goblet refilled. Then Renfred removed his red-eyed face from his hands. "Wait," he croaked. "If the King uses these men to play war and re-enact battles," his eyes glinted, "does that mean he'll come to Duskendale?"

Cousin Rykker thought it over. "I suppose so?"

Renfred Rykker grinned. "Think about it, coz. Our majesty the King is a heavy drinker. In his cups, imagine what he might be convinced to do!" He slammed his hand on the table, startling his wife, whose shriek caused her bosom to wobble. Renfred gazed at her bosom for one, two, three beats- and then met his cousin's eyes. "Speak to that man from King's Landing- the new one." He tapped his finger on the table. "What's his name? Minister something-or-other." He snorted. "Minister! What an odd word."

"What happened the last time a ruler of Duskendale attempted to convince a King to do something he didn't want to do?"

"Shut it, coz."

The banners came within sight about five hours before the Prince arrived. In the quarter of the castle reserved for the blacksmiths, one of their apprentices had made his home atop one of the towers, and spotted gold, black and red in the distance. He'd informed his master, who'd informed one of Qyburn's guards, and then it had found its way into Qyburn's own ears.

The antlered lion, that was what the smallfolk were calling it. Qyburn fancied it a rather interesting name, himself. He waited outside in his Stokeworth doublet- uncomfortable but necessary- and bowed deeply, leading the smallfolk of the surrounding fields and the blacksmiths of his castle as the Prince's horse reared up and came to a stop. Prince Joffrey's hair had darkened, he noticed.

"Castle Stokeworth is yours, Prince Joffrey," he murmured.

"Wait outside," the Prince told the men around him, wreathed in black, with gold and red wrapped around their waists and forearms, a crown stitched to their left breast. Qyburn had to admit that the Prince had a certain unique sense of style. He opened his mouth as the Prince dismounted, only to be silenced by a glare.

Well. That was concerning.

"Is there anyone else in this castle who might be listening in?"

"No, Prince Joffrey-"

"You. Serve. Me." The Prince whirled around as they ascended the stairs, leaving the blacksmiths and their apprentices and families to stump to their own quarter of the castle below. His finger jabbed into Qyburn's chest, crinkling the lamb on his heraldry. "Jon Arryn found out I was speaking to Frey. He learnt about Rosby too." His face twisted. In Qyburn's own opinion, Prince Joffrey was a handsome boy, though hardly on par with Lord Renly or the Knight of Flowers. It was when he was angry that his beauty was shattered. "He told me that you sent him a raven." His finger jabbed into Qyburn's chest again. "Why."

Qyburn frowned in confusion. "I know not," he replied, frankly, and as tentatively as he dared. "I sent no ravens, your Grace- all I do is make them."

The Prince relented, briefly, but Qyburn could tell that his anger was gone. That was how the Prince was- his explosions of fury were brilliant to behold, but it was clear that his natural state was not one of rage. "Next time, I want you to read every raven going to King's Landing." He started to slam his left fist into his right palm as they strode through the halls, a dry smacking sound that echoed with his footsteps. If Qyburn had a 21st-century education, he'd have called it a nervous tic. The Prince tended to have a lot of those.

"I have been working on such a concoction," Qyburn lied smoothly. He'd actually discovered such a solution some time back in the Citadel, but the Prince didn't need to know that. "To attract the ravens to Castle Stokeworth. Granted, it does not work for ravens coming from a southwesterly direction, but-"

"Oh, and I suppose it requires human flesh."

"Pig meat, as a matter of fact," Qyburn confessed, as he held the door for the Prince and the two of them moved into his study, where he had spent so many hours planning and sketching. This was where they'd met over the past few moons. Maps were mounted on the wall, one for each Lord Paramountcy; the Prince took great pleasure in rattling off the noble houses and their seats. Sometimes, Qyburn thought the Prince believed himself to actually be looking over Westeros when he gazed over the map. How else to explain the callousness with which he discussed killing generations of nobles, salting massive tracts of land, obliterating whole castles? Mayhaps he imagined that war was like a war-game: if things should go wrong, pause and restart until they go right.

"Ha!" I tipped my head back. "Pig meat!"

Qyburn waited patiently until I got myself back under control.

"Put this raven-pulling concoction into action," I ordered. "If you can make them go against their training… well, we could read every single raven that goes to King's Landing, and every single raven that goes from King's Landing. Do it."

"As you say."

"If Rosby talks… kill him."

A side-note: one of my many flaws was over-reaching. Take EU4. Oh, so Russia looks to be in a moment of weakness- beset by the Ottomans, in a real bind, Moscow taken. So I declare war. Guess what, within a year or so the Russians conclude a peace, muster 70k troops and wipe the floor with me. Two months later, they have Berlin.

Okay, so one of the primary lessons I learnt from that was that Russia in EU4 is OP. Another thing I learnt from that was that it doesn't matter if you have Prussian space marines. The immediately relevant lesson, however, was not to overreach.

But, you know, if you say "Oh, I won't play EU4 ever again, no sir, I need to study," and then you steadfastly ignore that finicky compass logo on your desktop, eventually you stray back to it, like a dog slinking back to its master. So, too, did I eventually return to that wonderful thing called overreach. Overconfidence, whatever.

I'd overreached going through Rosby to Frey. Frankly, Frey was a sneaky bastard, and we'd only been talking about Rosby and Royce and Swann and Crakehall and Blackwood. Hardly treason, but still rather on the way to plotting.

"And how goes the rest of your progress?"

Qyburn glanced away; he tended to do that, I noticed. "The, er, muskets..."

"I reckoned it'd take longer than I expected. Go on, what's the damage."

"We've lost half the blacksmiths."

"Lost as in dead, or lost as in ran away?"

"Dead."

"They may have left the castle and gotten to Jon Arryn." Paranoia is a slippery slope. I had to get myself under control. "Doesn't matter. I'll get the Alchemists to make more derivatives. In the meantime… well. I've been wondering how you make those ravens of yours."

Qyburn took great pleasure in his own biological experimentations; his eyes lit up. "Most certainly, Prince Joffrey." He rushed to a bookcase- his only frivolous pieces of furniture in his laboratory- and made an odd motion. The bookcase slid open, and a musty, sweaty smell drifted into my nose.

"Lead the way, Master of Whispers," I declared, as grandly and as loudly as I could.

The atmosphere became more and more oppressive the lower we got. Mostly, it was the smell. Other times, it was the little things- skittering where there should have been silence, something dragging itself across the floor on the other side of the wooden door, too many fingers on the handle as Qyburn opened a hatch and threw a pinch of gunpowder through-

I vomited.

"It takes a bit of getting used to," Qyburn commented agreeably.

Jaime should have seen the signs. Once Tyrion started vibrating, he should have got up and made to leave. Instead, he hadn't. And now his brother had his paws around his neck, squeezing with all the strength in his little body, lips flecked with spittle, veins throbbing in his protruding forehead. There was a low growl building in Tyrion's throat, building and building and building in intensity until it erupted from his mouth in an anguished scream.

Tyrion drew his hand back and hit Jaime across the face. Jaime made no effort to resist. The blows rained down, hard and fast, one after the other, and Jaime almost thought Tyrion would never stop, but he did, eventually. Jaime watched, prodding the bruises about his throat with a wince, as his brother, the smartest man Jaime had ever known, stumbled away from him, weeping.

Finally, when Tyrion had finished taking his fury out on a priceless Myrish tapestry with a random dagger on his desk (which spoke volumes about his mental state), he sagged, falling flat on his arse, and glared at Jaime with crimson-rimmed eyes. "You lied to me," he hissed, voice hoarse.

"That I did."

"Why?"

"Father told me-"

"Fuck Father," Tyrion howled. "Do you know what he did to her? Do you? I trusted you."

Jaime's lips thinned, and he looked away. "I did not find out until-"

"Get. Out."

"Tyrion-"

"GET OUT!"

Jaime got out.

"What do you want from the Free Cities?"

I looked up. There was no one there. Then I looked down, and saw my uncle. He'd been crying- hadn't cleaned it up very much- but his eyes were sparkling with intent. "Excuse me?"

"You were talking about a bank. You talk a lot, boy." A smile spread over Uncle Tyrion's face. "Myrish spyglasses. Perfumes from Lys. Seafood from Braavos." He took a few steps back and made a running leap onto my chair, arms spread wide. "Armour from Qohor! Spices from Pentos! Velvet from Lorath! Brandy from Tyrosh! You need but say the word."

"Why the rush?"

"Why the rush?" My uncle inclined his head at me. "I have all that Petyr Baelish used to have. I am one of the richest men in the Seven Kingdoms- one of the richest, nephew, when I used to live off my father's gold and spend it on trifling things like wine and women." His eyes glittered. "But now I have but one woman… if she'll have me."

"Don't get your hopes up," I warned him. "Words are wind. Varys might not have the right of it."

"I shall see the Free Cities nonetheless," Uncle Tyrion continued, undeterred, "and I shall stop at Braavos first of all." He was no longer listening to me; he was far, far away, alone on a boat in the middle of the Narrow Sea. "I shall find my lady wife and my darling, darling daughter, and we shall adventure far and wide before returning with a bounty fit to strike all Westeros dumb. So!" He levelled his finger at me. "What shall I get for you, nephew?"

I stared at him. "Nothing that we can't reproduce, first of all," I replied, slowly, as a grin similar to that of Uncle Tyrion's appeared on my own face, "but- I have a few ideas."

"Robert!"

"...wuzzit," the King growled, stirring grumpily from his sleep. The Imp bounded over to him, eyes glinting in the dim light that streamed through the curtains. The whores on either side of him whispered in their sleep.

"You said I could call you Robert, yes?"

"Yes," Robert muttered, "I did."

"I need men. And I need ships."

"...are you going on that long-deserved rest?"

"I am."

Robert Baratheon's eyes snapped open. Men and ships? He thought of years and years spent on the Iron Throne, drinking and whoring his life away. He thought of landscapes far-away, the famous courtesans of Braavos, the thrum in his bones as he caved a skull in. In the end, all the gold and wine and whores and finely made boars in the world couldn't have swayed his instinctive response.

"I'm coming too."

Support Staff (MCU AU)

It's Chins All The Way Down (Don Carlos SI)

Grunnings Drills, Inc. (Harry Potter AU)

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Neptune1

Jan 3, 2018

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Jan 9, 2018

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#65

Turns out, well, it'll be some time before the updates on here catch up with updates on . If there's any feedback it'll have to wait until update #15, probably.

I stood atop a pile of corpses, the sky crackling with lightning, one hand raised above my head, clutching a crackling staff. Before me a chaotic melee had erupted, hundreds upon thousands of men slaughtering each other on an open field at my pleasure. Massive, ragged flags flapped in the wind, tempest-toss'd. An array of scantily-clad maidens lounged before me, inexplicably resembling Victoria's Secret models. Fuck, I missed Victoria's Secret. Long nights spent on the couch, browsing YouTube alone…

Wait.

What sort of shitty medievalist fantasy was this? I'd spent far too much time in Westeros. Ugh. Let's try this again.

The wind snapped at my clean, neatly folded pants, light glancing off the medals clinking against my tunic. A thousand nuclear missiles unfolded at my back, arcing towards the shore in the distance. Above, helicopters swarmed towards the enemy. Music was blaring- shock and awe. I closed my eyes; how long had it been since I'd heard some real music? Fuck, I missed Singapore. A man, peaked cap perched jauntily on his brow, tapped me on the shoulder and said, Damn it, Robert, you can't just go shirking-

"-your responsibilities to the Iron Throne!" Jon Arryn paused for breath. I blinked, hard, and drank deeply from the goblet beside me. The wine pricked my throat as it went down; my faculties returned to me. "There is no precedent for this. This- this is madness, Robert."

"Nonsense! It's perfectly logical. If, as you say, no king may put himself in danger... well, then, I'll divest myself of the crown temporarily- and quite cheerfully and willingly too- and hop to the Free Cities for a jaunt."

The room fell silent. I felt a few gazes on me; both uncles. I looked up, smiled winningly at Uncle Renly, and ignored Uncle Stannis. Arryn maintained his staring contest with Fat Bob.

"What if you die?"

Fat Bob shrugged. "'Twill be fast, or I shall make it back in due time to be tended to by the best healers in the realm. I am not seeing a problem." He shifted in his seat. I did the same, and sat back to watch the shitshow unfold.

Half an hour of arguing later

"You know what I told you once, Jon? I'd've abdicated if I'd been safe in the knowledge that a Lannister would not hold the throne." Robert paused to let it sink in, let the entire room realize the implications of talking about his distrust of the Lannisters in the presence of a son who had been in the keeping of his golden-haired mother for far too long. "Joffrey used to be a little shit- still is, but much less so-" the Crown Prince squinted at his father- "-and, well, he's a Baratheon. Surely you won't burn all Westeros down within three moons." This was directed at his brothers, Jon, and the Crown Prince himself. "I need but a loyal core to hold the realm until I return." Put that way, it almost sounded sane.

Jon Arryn, Lord Paramount of the Vale, Hand of the King, and Robert Baratheon's ever-faithful nursemaid, closed his eyes and kneaded the bridge of his nose.

Robert folded his arms over his paunch and sat back in his chair smugly. Jon glanced around the room; the Master of Coin had intended to go all on his lonesome, but was now gazing about the room with an expression of mild bemusement and increasing impatience. The Master of Whispers was still at Castle Stokeworth, doing gods knew what; the Grand Maester was dozing off; Ser Barristan had already declared that he would accompany the King wherever he chose to go; and Stannis was grinding his teeth. Renly, for his part, had already thrown up his hands and left. Prince Joffrey had buried his face in his hands. He hadn't even told the King of the Dornish sore, but… somehow, Jon suspected that it might do more harm than good. Of course, the King would stay in Westeros… but he would stay to punish the Dornish for their treachery. Jon feared an angry Robert more than an absent Robert

"May I propose an alternative?" the Imp inquired. Seeing that most of the men at the table had already exhausted their options, he waddled up to the table and hoisted himself onto a chair. Jon watched as his finger landed on King's Landing and dragged itself up to Gulltown, and thence to White Harbour. "I could personally settle some business at those ports- give his Grace a chance to look upon his domain-"

Robert perked up.

"-and thereafter, sail for Braavos." Tyrion Lannister closed his eyes, as if pained. "We should stay there for about a quarter-moon or so- enough time to sort everything out with the Iron Bank, make clear that 'tis Baelish's fault and none else- and then back to Gulltown for supplies, tracing along the coast back to King's Landing."

Silence. Stannis grinded his teeth.

"...and what of Pentos?" Robert was asking, petulantly, and Jon came back to himself. "Are the last Targaryens not in that city?" He toyed with his warhammer. "About time I slayed some dragonspawn; Varys has my blood up, I must admit."

Prince Joffrey sighed and pressed the base of his palms into his eyes. Jon felt a faint flicker of sympathy in his breast. How pathetic was it, that the Hand of the King felt kinship with a potential bastard born of incest, owing to their common exasperation at the antics of the most powerful man in the Realm?

It was not he but Tyrion Lannister who spoke up. "Be serious, your Grace," he counselled, with the steady wisdom of a man deep in his cups- was he drunk? Jon couldn't tell- "to attack Pentos is to attack a fortified city. The Targaryens know Pentos better than you- if you were to fall, I ask you, would you rather die across the Narrow Sea, without your family close at hand, without a wineskin, without a whore, than in King's Landing, in the heart of a city that loves you, with your sons and daughter and your brothers by your bedside-"

"Enough," Robert barked. "I see your point. And I suppose you'd like to exclude me from your trip to Myr, as well?"

Tyrion Lannister smiled apologetically.

I met Jon Arryn in his study later. We regarded each other wearily.

"So, how did you find out about me and Walder Frey and that Rosby fellow?"

"One of the ravens got through," Arryn explained, pinching the bridge of his nose. "And, as for the Freys… it was a fortuitous guess." He smiled at me deviously- at least, as deviously as a kind old man can, which was devious indeed. "I might as well tell you this now, given that you'll be running Westeros over the next moon or so… if Robert comes back. We have larger concerns, anyway."

"Dorne. Are we-"

"We will do nothing."

I sat back in my chair and blinked. There was a window to Arryn's back, a little off-centre, framed by tapestries of dynastic crests and maps of the Vale and Westeros. I imagine pushing him out of that window. Plucking at my doublet, I managed a shaky laugh. "Are you serious? I had in mind a proper offensive… cut them down for treason. Burn Sunspear to the ground-"

"Do you know what happened the last time an invasion of Dorne was attempted?"

"Yes, of course, but-"

"Aegon had, potentially, six of the seven kingdoms united behind him, and he failed. The Dornish melted into the deserts."

"Then we can replace the Dornish. Bring in new blood to tend the fields. Let them stay in the deserts and the mountains, we will take their income and starve them out-"

"Do you think the lords of the realm would obey a stripling years before his majority? Even if you were to circulate the marriage contract far and wide, there remain Targaryen loyalists in certain parts of the land. They may not take it the way you would wish."

"Fine," I growled. "But you will give me free reign to implement my own plans as I wish within the Crownlands."

"No interfering with any Rosby inheritances or similar mischief."

"Done."

I'll be the first to admit that swordfighting was the low point of my day.

I've never been much of a fan of co-operative sports- I do my best work alone, running, swimming, lifting weights, and, of late, horse-riding. I'm a solitary person. But I need to mingle with the men- I need to be seen as one of them- and so I do what I must. And, in any case, for a man to beat the Prince in sword-fighting- it helps to make them more disposed towards me. Though I had to be careful to just barely toe the line between respect and contempt.

"The King! The King!"

I turned, smoothly, my sword plunging into the soil at my feet, and raised my arm aloft. "Heil!"

"HEIL BARATHEON! HEIL BARATHEON! HEIL BARATHEON!"

My father returned the salute smilingly, and, well-aware of the part that he was playing, advanced on me in a suitably dignified fashion. The Kingsguard flanked him, and my gaze flickered over them. I was already aware of the men whom he was bringing with him- Ser Barristan, of course, and two of the more competent ones- and, of the four whom he was leaving behind, the most important were Uncle Jaime and Myrcella's protector, Oakheart. From a distance, this whole scene probably looked quite impressive- the Prince, dressed in a simple tunic like a member of the smallfolk, while the King laid his crown on his head. Very Arthur Pendragon-ish.

A short digression: I had not meant to set Uncle Tyrion off like that. I know, I don't sound genuine, but it's true. I just thought… well. I was foolish, and now I'm going to pay for it. The situation had spiraled out of control- Uncle Tyrion had only been meant to take what I needed, and then return to his duties. As things stood, though, the Imp might not return from Braavos. Even worse, Fat Bob might not return from Braavos. And just as I was starting to like him, too! If I were to be crowned ahead of time, the capital would bear host to Arryn (and Renly, and Stannis, and...) fighting my mother, and that was something that no one (well, probably no one except my mother) wanted to happen. Still, though, no reigning king could just… cross the Narrow Sea like that. There had to be contingencies. A fall-back. Just goes to show how things can't always go your way.

Fat Bob removed the antler crown from his head and hefted it in his palm. Then he turned around and gazed closely at the thousands of men assembled outside the city walls. He spoke- and his voice was so much more suited to public speaking than mine was, with its sonorous depths and truculent highs.

"Men of King's Landing. My son has served you well in the past few moons- he has helped to weed out traitors and reform the very face of the city. Now, I have need to travel for a time- in my absence, King's Landing and the Realm requires a steady hand at the helm. A man with a steady hand, judicious in the application of power, and loyal above all. Now, who among you matches this description?"

Fortunately, my Decade realized the implication immediately. They were first to raise the cry.

"Joffrey! Joffrey! Joffrey!"

Somewhere, Uncle Stannis was grinding his teeth. I grinned. Served the bastard right for not getting with the program.

My father smiled. "Indeed! In my absence, Prince Joffrey shall serve- temporarily- as King. This is the first time it has ever been attempted in the history of Westeros!" He bent down, towards me, and clapped his hands on my shoulders. "Do not fail me," he rumbled, in a voice pitched just soft enough that only I could hear it. I nodded vigorously.

He laid the antler crown gently on my head and, just like that, I was King.

This was a terrible time to become King. I hadn't even started laying the foundations of my eventual rule yet- the Crownlands were not yet sufficiently loyal, the muskets were nowhere near done, Qyburn probably hadn't started testing the cannons yet. Even worse, the Imp might not return with the pilfered technology I'd requested- the pilfered technology that he was supposed to be collecting in the first place, before he'd decided to go and pick up his ex-wife and daughter. As Uncle Jaime, Oakheart and their two sworn brothers (I refused to remember their names) went down on one knee and held their swords up in their hands, I accepted their leal service smilingly. The sun beat down on my back.

Heavy the head that lies the crown, or something like that.

"I'll be safe," my father groused, loudly, as Uncle Stannis grimaced and whispered a few more choice words under his breath. "Now, are you all quite done with your well-wishes?"

Father had come outside the walls to swing his warhammer about once or twice as Baratheon men were called from Storm's End to crew his ships. Uncle Stannis was pulling out all the stops for this journey- three ships, sailing as close to one another as they dared, paid to accompany the King (for all that I wore the Crown, Father was still the King) and the Master of Coin to and from Braavos. Uncle Tyrion refused to allow men in Lannister livery to board the ship, and I suppose I couldn't blame him. The great ships by the Blackwater bobbed slowly up and down on the tide as Fat Bob (slightly less fat, now, and growing faster on his feet) glanced from one face to another. Then he blinked as Tommen and Myrcella swarmed him, crying their eyes out.

"There, there," he rumbled, patting them on their heaving backs. "I'll be back within two moons."

Mother held her arms out as they ran back to her, and permitted herself one parting jab: "Do try not to die."

"Oh, trust me, woman, I won't." I heard him mutter, under his breath, "I'll stay alive just to spite you."

Uncle Tyrion surveyed the horizon from the ship. He glanced down, once, to make eye contact with Uncle Jaime who raised a hand in salute, and then swerved to meet my eyes. I nodded at him. He nodded back, mouth set. I watched as Father boarded the ship and lifted the Imp upon his shoulders in one smooth motion. Uncle Tyrion closed his eyes, forced a smile, and waved to the smallfolk as they cheered.

"The adventures we'll have!" My father sounded more alive than he'd ever been. "Mayhaps we shall dock in Sisterton to bestow upon the smugglers the King's Justice!" Uncle Tyrion blanched. "Or maybe not!"

The entire harbour could hear my father at this point.

"Off we go," Fat Bob said, suddenly, back to his regular voice, and turned to gaze at the horizon.

The ships groaned and lurched out of port. I became suddenly and painfully aware of the eyes on me and my antler crown. "Your Grace," Uncle Jaime murmured, sardonically, and dipped into a comically exaggerated bow. Jon Arryn turned without a word and strode back into King's Landing; after a beat, Uncle Stannis followed him. I made a mental note to talk to Uncle Stannis more. Uncle Renly remained where he was, talking quietly with Tommen, who was still crying. One by one, the men and women arranged along the Blackwater bowed and curtseyed. To me.

Well, maybe being the King wasn't that bad.

Or maybe it was.

I watched in silence as the golden-red procession wound its way ponderously down the road from the Lion Gate. The antler crown was still on my head- I'd barely seated my ass on the exceedingly uncomfortable Iron Throne (it was surprisingly anti-climatic- didn't hear any music blaring from the heavens as I arranged myself into a moderately comfortable position) when word had come from the heralds positioned atop the city walls that my grandfather had arrived.

Fuck.

Well, I suppose I could make it memorable.

"Roys," I muttered, out of the corner of my mouth, "essentially, just liaise with Wendwater on the details. I'd be lying if I said I understood anything of forging, but just get the water-wheels working. Alright?" I didn't wait for a response; leaning forward, against the balcony, I continued. "Remember that night? When you swore yourselves to me? Let's give Lord Lannister a warm welcome."

Roys' stare flicked to me. He smiled, clapped a fist to his chest, and went. I departed soon after to stand with the rest of the family at the square; behind me, I could almost feel it- the nerves of the Red Keep vibrating- as the message went out, relayed through word-of-mouth, on the wind, spreading through King's Landing from its crimson, beating heart. I smiled, briefly, as Mother regarded the crown on my head admiringly, and raised my hand aloft.

"SIEG HEIL!"

My cry was picked up by the smallfolk; their voices carried, amplified by my men, my own commissars. As soon as the first HEIL died down, another rose to take its place, louder than the last, from a thousand throats, and then ten thousand, twenty thousand, a hundred thousand.

"HEIL LANNISTER!"

Some distance from the Red Keep, wind blew through Tywin Lannister's mutton-chop sideburns, the physical manifestation of a chant amplified and reflected by a million throats. The Lord Paramount of the West was nearly blown off his horse. Fortunately for him, he stayed mounted- and, by the time he reached the square outside the Red Keep, his ears had almost stopped ringing.

Pleasantries were exchanged. Tywin drove his horse into the outer yard of the Red Keep after the welcoming party had retreated behind its walls. Before he did, though, he chanced a glance at the smallfolk of King's Landing. Their salute- such as it was- rankled him. The glint in their eyes… it didn't rankle him, not exactly, but Tywin Lannister was too proud to admit to even so much as a hint of apprehension.

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Neptune1

Jan 9, 2018

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Neptune1

Neptune1

Disturbingly obsessed with Nilbog

Jan 9, 2018

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#68

Best to post all the updates quickly so we get to the same point in the story on both forums.

"Well," I said, as the gates swung shut behind us, "that went well."

I was quite concerned that I'd brutally cocked up the whole "guest right" thing with Lannister, but Mother had coached me through the basics. In the Red Keep, out of the view of the common man, things were less performative, but, well, my grandfather wasn't the type of guy to loosen up… ever. As my feet clacked over the stones, I turned back to look and found that everyone was staring at me.

My antler crown prickled against my scalp.

Mother glared at me significantly, jerking her head at the throne room. "Right," I muttered, to no one in particular. I felt oddly concerned that I'd screw this up as well, but what did I have to fear? King's Landing was mine, after all. No one would laugh. Not even my grandfather would laugh- mostly because he never laughed anyway. I could be wrong. I glanced at my grandfather and his men- a contingent of ten or so, the rest having filtered away to spend their coin in the brothels and the taverns. Green eyes glittered impassively at me. I swallowed.

Right. That was what I had to fear. How irrational of me. Then again, in a world where dragons and ice zombies existed...

There was a comfortable, padded chair at the foot of the dais. Atop the dais, the Iron Throne lurked, crouching balefully over the proceedings, blocking out the light streaming through the windows. I fell into the chair with a brief exhalation of relief; footsteps rang out across the throne room as everyone rushed into place, and then- silence.

"May I ask," and there was no hint of any curiosity in his voice, "where the King is."

Honestly, why was I scared of Tywin Lannister in the first place? He was just intimidating. Realistically speaking, he couldn't do anything to me.

"You've caught us at a rather bad time, I'm afraid, Lord Lannister," I said smoothly, wincing in apology as Jon Arryn's mouth clamped shut from where he was standing beside me. "The King and the Imp have just set off for Braavos to renegotiate the terms of Baelish's loans. They will return in a moon or so." After a long beat of silence, I gestured at my chair. "I'm just… wearing the crown in his absence. The Iron Throne isn't that comfortable, and I'm not exactly the King, so I grabbed my own seat."

Grandfather's face literally didn't change at all. Not a single twitch. You know how Dumbledore's eyes are supposed to twinkle? Yeah. Grandfather's eyes glittered.

I'd maintained eye contact for far too long. I glanced to Arryn for support, and then Mother. Grandfather was still staring at me.

"You, er, came here quite fast. Faster than the ravens, even!" I sniggered. Obligingly, a titter rose from the crowd. Grandfather's gaze sharpened. Way to defuse the tension, I thought to myself, and restrained my hand from rising up to smack my forehead.

After a few minutes of terse small talk with Arryn, Grandfather left the room. He was quite polite about it, I suppose, but there are plenty of ways to convey your general displeasure apart from just being impolite. The hall settled into an awkward silence. I was dreading tonight's inevitable family dinner.

Typically, I knew, this late in the afternoon, Father would be off in a brothel, drinking, or hunting, leaving the hall to Arryn and Uncle Renly. Uncle Stannis would be down by the docks, tending to his ships. Pycelle would be in his library, or in a brothel. Well, if Fat Bob had been an absent king… who was I to get in the way of tradition? I rose to my feet.

"Right, um, now that my esteemed grandfather has left the building..." I clapped my hands once. "Dismissed. Shoo. Courtiers, go pester someone else. Lord Arryn, Lord Baratheon… the hall is at your disposal." My Decade emerged from the throng, pushing aside the rest of the smallfolk in the employ of the Red Keep, and fell in line around me. My immediate family beckoned.

To her credit, Mother didn't make any snide remarks as my Decade came to a stop before her. "Was I good?"

"Well," Uncle Jaime cut in, "we're all still processing the arrival of my father, but I'm sure that once we have enough thought to devote to your extremely dignified portrayal of kingship, we'll agree that you were fantastic."

"What was that about, anyway?" Tyrek blurted, and immediately slapped a hand over his mouth.

"Grandfather has a habit of arriving at King's Landing without sending word," Myrcella explained flatly. "Every time he comes by, he tries to intimidate Father." Really? I mean, I took issue with the "tries to", since Grandfather was clearly way more suited to the intimidating business than Fat Bob, but I didn't have any memories of being Joffrey before being dropped in, so I guess I'd just take her word for it. "The last time he arrived in King's Landing, he brought you in with him."

I tuned their words out as we shuffled out into the sun. Today had been disorienting. I was used to being ignored- for the most part- and being left alone to run King's Landing- which was, by the way, a full-time job, and certainly way harder than whatever "Master of Laws" stuff Uncle Renly was doing in the throne room. As we edged into the Middle Bailey, I dragged myself back to conversation, found that it was mostly Uncle Jaime talking to Tyrek and Lancel about swords, and stumped on ahead to go up to my quarters.

There was a raven waiting for me from Qyburn.

Lords of the Crownlands returning to King's Landing. Expect several ravens informing of their intent. May be bringing eligible daughters.

Oh, right. Yeah, I'd never really taken much of an interest in the lords of the Crownlands, save for the distant acknowledgement that their resources would be mine soon enough. Once I'd started holding torchlit rallies, they'd started filtering out of the city- only Rosby and Stokeworth had remained. Now they were coming back. Actually, come to think of it- was there, like, a social season? Surely the Crownlander lords weren't in King's Landing throughout spring. I glanced through the message again. Qyburn didn't know that Fat Bob had decided to leave for Braavos. I mean, fair enough, it'd only been two days, but-

I reread the message again.

May be bringing eligible daughters.

When it rains, it pours.

Eddard Locke glanced up as the sun was abruptly obscured. "Oh," he said. "It's you."

"'Tis me," Penten of the Dekad agreed, cheerfully, and set a crate down beside Eddard to sit. He peered over the parchment. "How goes the recording?"

"Well enough," Eddard replied. "I daresay that there are many more transactions going on under our noses that the smallfolk would rather not reveal, however- but those merchants who are legitimate are certainly willing to obey."

"We'll be moving on the smugglers and lawless folk soon enough," Penten commented, offhandedly, and met Eddard's horrified gaze with an astounding degree of nonchalance. "What?"

"One does not simply challenge the smugglers," Eddard murmured. "They hold sway everywhere. They have friends in high places."

"Like yourself?"

Eddard drew back as though he had been slapped. In a way, he had. Penten continued. "Please, do not look upon yourself like a virtuous man. Reformed though you may be, you, like so many others, suckled from the Mockingbird's poisoned tit." He made a face at the metaphor. "The Imp, the Hand and- of course- the Prince have been working on weeding out your rot, but there is much that remains to be done- and among them, clearing the roads of bandits and the cities of criminals." He patted Eddard on the shoulder gently. "I shall leave you to your recording. If you continue with this level of exemplary performance, I do believe that you might be installed in one of House Buckwell's towns. I'll speak to the Prince." He winked, rose to his feet and sauntered away- doubtless to check on the rest of Eddard's fellows.

The Prince's Decade made their rounds. Records were made- drawn up on parchment purchased from Braavos- recording imports and exports. The internal transactions of King's Landing were watched carefully by gold-cloaked men. Red-cloaked men engaged in skirmishes with the City Watch- skirmishes that inevitably ended in the Watch's favour. By the Blackwater, a rudimentary wooden wheel was taking shape. And, atop Rhaenys' Hill, a grey monolith was taking shape.

Arin and Jaddon rode down the Rosby Road.

"The stag on high," their men sang, squashed between their mounts. Arin glanced at the woods to his left. They were dense, murky; the Seven only knew how many criminals lurked in the trees. For the past few moons, Arin, Jaddon and nearly two hundred other men from King's Landing had been rotated in and out, leading patrols through the forest, in search of brigands and bandits to execute. The chant rose above the treetops; its sole purpose was to intimidate. "The lion is triumphant!"

Arin reached into his jerkin and scratched his armpit; with his other hand, he maintained a tight grip on his horse's reins. Personally, he didn't really like the song. The rumour went that the Prince had come up with the melody, and promptly thrust it over to the Ministers to come up with a song to fit the tune. They'd eventually thrown the problem over to a visiting troupe of mummers who soon found themselves in the employ of the Prince.

"King's Landing stands/Astride a throne of steel!"

Even a child knew that the Iron Throne was made of iron. Still, if it fit the tune, Arin could understand why one might say that it was made of steel.

"Come out, come out, goat-fuckers and vile stupid pig-dogs!"

Arin reached into his scabbard and laid one hand on his sword. He had been born, bred and raised in King's Landing. He had made his way through the streets, in the shadow of the hovels that multiplied and shoved up against one another, and, once or twice, run into a lordling or a knight. But here- out in the forest- in the empty, silent middle-ground between one inn and another, or one holdfast and another, it was easy to imagine monsters.

"Tonight we feast/on your daughters and your sons!"

"Nervous?"

Arin glanced over at Jaddon. His friend grinned at him; he'd taken to the patrols with more enthusiasm than Arin himself. "You've got a sword, don't you? We're the most dangerous folk on the Rosby Road for a hundred leagues."

The Prince's Song was meant to arouse anger in those who listened to it. It was a taunt, the verbal equivalent of a middle finger and a clenched fist. Anger made you sloppy; Arin knew that, from years of tavern-fights in Flea Bottom. Hopefully, any bandits who heard it would come out of the woods to attack. Arin's gaze swept over the upturned chins, the sly, smug grins, the flinty eyes, arrayed before him. His men- most of them from King's Landing- hefted their maces and daggers, spitting the words out as their eyes raked the forest.

"So run you fools/but know that one thing is for certain!"

Arin's horse tramped through the soil. The wind blew through his muddy-brown hair. Tentatively, he drew his sword from its scabbard and added his voice to the chorus.

"You can run now/but you can never hide!"

I whistled as I slid my doublet on and buckled my belt. King's Landing sprawled out before me, lit by hanging lamps. Fires blazed on Rhaenys' Hill; if I squinted, I could make out hundreds of tiny black-clothed figures moving around in the unfinished structure. This was my bureaucracy. With them, I was going to reshape the Crownlands. Still… bureaucrats were all well and good, but the nobility would probably not take kindly to having their ancient privileges revoked.

Well, fuck 'em. Can't make an omelette without killing a few kids.

I'd eschewed Baratheon colours tonight in favour of the classic red-gold Lannister aesthetic. Mother had been quite pleased at my sudden change in wardrobe, though she probably knew the reasons behind it. The door was opened for me; I made my way, dragging my hand over the walls, to the dining chamber.

Maegor's Holdfast really had a lot of history. It was like living in a European castle at the height of its utility; at a time when the walls and hiding-holes and armouries actually had a use.

"Sorry I'm late," the Prince said breezily, pushing the oak doors open with both hands in a grand flourish. Tapestries lined the walls; most of them bore lions. The Baratheon uncles had begged off, claiming prior engagements; none of the assembled were particularly sad to see them gone, except for maybe Myrcella and Tommen. Tywin Lannister followed his grandson's silhouette as he pulled a chair and sat down, a whirlwind of movement, bestowing brief, fleeting smiles on the servers as they swept in beside him.

A few glances were exchanged. Tywin partook in none of those; he did not deal in uncertainties. "Shall we eat?" Cersei volunteered. Tywin said nothing. Joffrey cast his eyes over the food and drummed his fingers on the table. Jaime glanced at Cersei. Tommen and Myrcella stared determinedly at their plates.

Tywin waited until he felt that everyone present was uncomfortable enough before deliberately spearing a slice of meat with his fork and placing it in his mouth.

They ate in silence- or, at least, for as long as Tywin felt they should be able to eat in silence.

"Why is your husband going to Braavos?"

Cersei started, like a restless cat, and stared at him for a heartbeat. "I don't claim to know what goes on in my lord husband's head," she replied, stiffly.

"Is that so?" Tywin murmured. "This seems like one of your plots, Cersei, so forgive me if I remain sceptical."

Cersei inhaled. Two spots of red stood out on her porcelain cheeks. Jaime glanced up at his father and then looked back down at his meal, sullenly. Lancel and Tyrek glanced up at regular intervals to watch the interplay.

Joffrey coughed lightly. "Grandfather," he began, timidly at first but rapidly increasing in confidence and volume, "the Crownlander lords are coming down to King's Landing soon. Mayhaps a few days' time."

There was a tense silence.

"Is that so."

"Yep!"

Tywin's eyes glittered. "There has been a great deal of movement in King's Landing of late. I thought it best to visit… to make sure that nothing has gone terribly wrong."

"Oh, we're still the primary force at court, make no mistake about that," Joffrey bulldozed on, flippantly. "The Imp is my father's newest drinking buddy. The city loves the Lannisters more, not less."

Cersei and Jaime exchanged glances. Tommen's mouth had fallen open. Lancel and Tyrek shovelled food into their mouths. Tywin's eyes glittered.

"Since you are feeling unusually talkative tonight, why don't you tell us more about that?"

"There was a fire," Joffrey continued, insouciantly, "and Flea Bottom died. The Mad King had buried pots of wildfire beneath King's Landing, but the blast was, fortunately, weak enough that not all of King's Landing went up in flames. Thanks to Uncle Jaime." He smiled as the Kingsguard coughed suddenly, spraying wine into his meal. "I made some friends. You know how us boys are like, right? We came up with our own special rituals. The city loves me. So I told them to greet you- give the Warden of the West an extra-special welcome. The entire city welcomed you, you know." A pause. "Not all of King's Landing went up in flames; only Flea Bottom. Fortunately. Myself and my friends helped. We all did. It was a joint effort. Varys was behind it. He's dead. Baelish was executed for the people for being a cunt."

He paused for breath. Tywin's eyes glittered.

"Been trying to fuck the Maesters. Didn't work. Trying to bind the lordlings closer to the Crown- get their gold, their men. Still working on it. Thinking of setting up a bank. Stokeworth is under the Crown; would've gotten Rosby too, but some Frey took it first." Joffrey drummed his fingers on the table. "Fucker." A pause. "Demolished the Dragonpit. Sending patrols out to weed banditry out of the Crownlands. Fly the flag. Remind the Crownlander lords who exactly it is that they owe their loyalty to. Fucking Crownlands need to be reminded permanently." His eyes rolled in their sockets; the glimmer of spit glistened at the side of his mouth.

The rest of the meal passed in icy silence. Tywin Lannister turned his grandchild's words over in his mind. When Joffrey finished his meal, palmed the serving girl's arse and left, wrangling his siblings and cousins with deft ease, he levelled a cold, appraising stare at his children. "Has he been spending too much time with Tyrion?"

Cersei struggled for an answer. "Joffrey is… bright. For his age."

"Bright? King's Landing is in disarray. I heard that charters have been going out from the Red Keep, bound for towns in the Crownlands. What in the seven hells is that absurd grey material sloughing over everything? 'Tis coarse, rough, irritating; it gets everywhere."

"Joffrey calls it concrete," Jaime replied. "The smallfolk rebuilt Flea Bottom in six moons with it."

When he was alone in his chambers, Tywin Lannister sat at his desk and polished his helm, setting the little grey shards pulled from his helm on his desk before him. He thought.

The following day, he began to look through Tyrion's records.

"Lord Stokeworth," Qarl greeted, "you look well."

The antlered lion fluttered in the wind at his back. It had taken the party of fifty a little over two days to reach Stokeworth lands. On their trips through the woods, they had encountered several other parties of a hundred men apiece, with two or three officers mounted on horseback. The officers knew their men; the men, for their part, were paid well from the loot earned through killing bandits and selling their possessions. When they had finally emerged into the sunlight, they beheld the Stokeworth lands.

"Please, let us dispense with formalities," Qyburn replied, softly. "I am but a humble servant of the King, and Stokeworth is held in trust for the King. Call me Qyburn."

"Minister Qyburn, Master of Whispers, then," japed Vance. "Sieg Heil."

"Sieg Heil." The men saluted one another and disappeared into the depths of the castle. Their subordinates took up position at the gate, flinty eyes sweeping the crowds of peasants tending the fields. Ravens crowded the battlements; the stone walls were starting to look a bit flimsy in places. Inside, it was well-lit, if slightly stuffy; more braziers had been mounted on the walls. Qyburn led Vance and Qarl up a flight of stairs, down a long hallway, and, finally, through a vast door as wide as they were tall and twice as high.

"Your lands seem to flower even more every time we ride by," Vance remarked, settling into a chair with a pint of sweetwine. "And- is that a town I see?"

"I call it Princeton," Qyburn answered, with a smile. The three men chuckled genially. "And I presume the flowering of my lands is why you are here?"

"Well, to be exact- we are here because the Prince ordered it." Qarl swallowed his mouthful of pastry. "Good food. Some of the bakers from King's Landing set up here?"

"Their son. You know Corrad?" Qyburn waited for them to nod. "Yes. His son- Calrin- secured a loan from the Prince. Arrived here half a moon ago." He drained his goblet and set it down, gently, on a dog-eared, stained parchment finely illustrating the anatomy of a female torso. "I've the goods you seek."

Qarl and Vance waited as Lord Stokeworth disappeared into the dank, ill-smelling dungeons briefly, and then emerged with a crate gingerly held in his leanly muscled arms. "The instructions are here," he added, passing them a slip of paper. Qarl took one look and blinked. "You make this from piss?"

"And bird shit, yes," Qyburn agreed.

"You should've been a Maester," Vance murmured wonderingly. Qyburn preened. "Well," he murmured, "you are not wrong, my boy; but if I was a Maester, well, would I be here?"

"That's true, that's true." Qarl made sure the crate was held securely in the crook of his arm. "Do you have a name for it?"

"Joffreyseed."

They laughed all the way to the gates.

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Neptune1

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Disturbingly obsessed with Nilbog

Jan 10, 2018

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#72

At long last, this thread is caught up to the thread on . Maybe is exposed to a lower quality of writing? That would certainly make sense.

New day, new moon. I poked my head out the window, took a deep breath, and immediately regretted it.

My chambers hadn't grown noticeably, but I felt like they'd shrunk, somehow. Maybe it was because I'd grown. Actually, that was an odd thing- technically, I was eleven. Yet- when I stared down at myself- I seemed rather more developed than any eleven-year-old had any right to be. Even taking into account how folks in Westeros had to mature earlier, by sheer necessity, my endurance and strength were far outside what I remembered from my own childhood as a weak, scrawny boy in Singapore.

Then again, maybe I was wrong.

I hadn't kept track of the days very closely, but the moons seemed to take a bit longer to pass. The years, too- I'd been in Westeros for about a year, now, and it felt like the years had taken a while longer to pass than they normally did. Then again, I'd never been very good with long stretches of time, but… it was possible, wasn't it? The months were longer; the years were longer. Add those up, and the idea that I looked fourteen when I was actually eleven made more sense. It may have contributed to the shorter lifespan of even the nobles. Though, well, who knew?

I huffed to myself. Why bother with these things? I had work to do. I went to my bed and changed my clothes- there again was another one of the small inefficiencies of being the heir to the Iron Throne. You know, back in Singapore, I could spend a whole day wearing the same suit of clothes. The doublets and cloaks and whatnot that I had to wear now were so stiff and easily sweat-soaked that I had no choice but to wear pyjamas. The humanity.

Funnily enough, the Red Keep lacked the levels of ceremony and pomp that I would have expected from Louis XIV's court. I supposed it was because we liked our privacy. I tucked into my eggs and bacon with gusto, topped it off with warm milk, and started out of Maegor's Holdfast at my earliest convenience. One of the best things about being the Crown Prince was that you got to set your own timetable. No one else. Ah, freedom.

"Prince Joffrey, Lord Arryn has summoned you to the Small Council."

Fuck.

The guy talking to me had a falcon sewn to his doublet. Just moments after he babbled the Hand's summons, another guy screeched to a stop before the two of us and repeated the statement, only replacing "Lord Arryn" with "Lord Lannister". The two men locked gazes and snarled like cornered cats. (And I would know- far too much time spent with Tommen had hammered that into my skull).

Double fuck. That didn't bode well for the continued stability of the Red Keep. Why couldn't I be left to build a brutal autocracy atop the shattered bones of smallfolk in peace?

Then again… I suppose I had asked for it. Ah, the things I do for power.

The atmosphere inside was certainly quite tense. Most of the people there were already in place- Uncles Stannis and Renly, Arryn… that was it. Right. Those still standing were my grandfather and Uncle Jaime.

"Ser Selmy is protecting the King. In his absence, therefore, my son should be the acting Lord Commander." Grandfather was hovering around the Master of Coin's chair, but he seemed to be refraining from actually touching it. Perhaps he didn't want to be seen grasping at his second son's sloppy seconds.

"He left no provisions," Arryn snarled back. Uncle Renly twisted his head around, noticing me, and rolled his eyes. Behind him, Uncle Jaime did the same. For my part, I leaned against the doorframe, forcing the poor servant to hold the door open for a while longer, and watched the show. Fortunately, Grandfather and Arryn were so involved in the argument that they noticed nothing.

"On grounds of seniority, my son deserves to be the acting Lord Commander."

"Seniority means nothing if there is no precedence, and there is certainly no precedence for this." Without breaking eye contact, Arryn gestured at Qyburn's empty seat.

Funny thing was, Uncles Stannis and Renly didn't seem to be coming down on one side or another. Though their backs were to me, I had the strangest feeling that they were watching the whole thing like it was a soccer match.

"You're in my spot," I announced, grandly, and swept into the room. The chamber fell silent; Grandfather blinked at me as I swept past him and fell into the cushioned seat at the head of the table, propping my feet up on the finely carved wood. Actually, no one had been in my spot, but I'd always wanted to say that, and now that I had the chance I was damn well going to do it as often as I could. Actually…

"Your Grace," Grandfather began.

"Ser Selmy left no provisions," I cut him off, apologetically, my left foot twitching at the rush of adrenalin that came from exercising this sort of power. "Sorry, Uncle. This meeting would've been boring for you, anyways." Uncle Jaime gave me a grateful look, noticed that Grandfather was glaring at him, and left quickly.

"Lord Lannister, as one of the greatest lords in Westeros, won't you- temporarily- fill the post of Master of Coin?" I took my feet off the table and leaned forward. "You didn't become the richest man in Westeros by sitting on your pile of gold at Casterly Rock, after all, I'd wager." Actually, he probably had, but- appearances were everything. Grandfather glared at me, then glanced around at the room, probably noticing that he was the only one awkwardly standing.

He sat.

I leaned back again into the very nicely padded chair (built for Father's bulk, not mine) and drummed my fingers on the table. "So what do we have for us today? I've a busy day myself." Something occurred to me. "Actually, where's Pycelle?"

"Pycelle is here," the call came from the door, and the decrepit-looking fellow shuffled across the floor to tumble into his seat. "My deepest apologies, Prince Joffrey."

"None taken." That was probably redundant, but why the hell not?

"So? What is it today?"

Uncle Stannis spoke up first. "Nothing to report." Unsurprising, since the Master of Ships only became properly important in times of war. I had to look into enlarging the Royal Fleet, though.

Uncle Renly spoke up next. "Nothing to report." That was a bit concerning, but it wasn't like he could arbitrate cases from King's Landing. Then again, I suppose I was partially responsible for his current plight (not that he would think of it as a plight) by taking the position of judge, jury and executioner into my hands. Anyway.

Pycelle snored.

Alright, fuck him. My eyes refocused on Grandfather and Arryn, who were glaring at one another again. Whatever I said would be construed as a statement for one and against the other. So I decided to go the third way and say something that would be equally offensive to both of them.

"I've been thinking of betrothals."

"Absolutely not."

"Out of the question."

The two men paused, regarded one another, and then focused their attentions on me. I quailed.

"Your father has sent no word."

"I will not allow a Lannister to have an inferior marriage." By which he meant a marriage that had taken place without his consent.

"A Tyrell?"

The two old men were speechless with outrage. Uncle Renly cast his eyes to the heavens rapturously. Pycelle snored. I drummed my fingers on the table as the silence was broken by Arryn's sudden explosion of rage; Grandfather, it seemed, preferred to sit back in his chair, watching the old man shout at me.

I rose abruptly.

"Well, I suppose I could give it time," I shouted over Arryn. "Anyway, meeting adjourned. Have a nice day ahead."

There was a crowd gathering in the market square. "They demand rights," Cousin Rykker told Renfred Rykker, over their afternoon drink. "Rights! I ask you, where do these peasants get such jumped-up ideas? Ridiculous." Long, harsh rays of light slashed across the floor of the Dun Fort. Such was life inside the ancient seat of the Darklyns- either one crouched in darkness or burnt in the light. There was little middle ground.

"I blame Essos," Lord Rykker grumped, rubbing his face. "Fucking Lannisport and Oldtown don't suffer like we do. Essos and those fucking Free Cities- that's the problem. That's where they get their ideas from. Our charter means there're more merchants coming in from Braavos and Myr and Pentos."

The small crowd was growing, bit by bit. A petition was submitted; an attendant knocked on the door of the solar and delivered a handwritten scrawl. Lord Rykker looked it over. "Coz," he said, through gritted teeth, "you know those men the Prince asked us to quarter? Get them over here. It's about time they proved their worth to us."

Cousin Rykker's eyes flicked over the parchment over his Lord's shoulder. "They thought, they thought, they thought," he sniggered, meanly. "They thought being a city means they're free! Hah!" He poured himself another goblet of wine and quaffed it thoughtfully. "Duskendale is ours. Our taxes to pay. Ours to run." He patted his cousin on the shoulder. "Keep your mind free of worry, coz- you've an appointment in King's Landing in a moon, by my reckoning. I shall hold the Dun Fort in your absence against jumped-up smallfolk."

In an hour, the market square of Duskendale ran red with blood.

Tyrion tore his gaze from the whore's teats and gazed out over the hall.

Gulltown was a pleasant enough city, to be sure, but its loyalties were suspect; the King, of all people, knew this. House Grafton had had its numerous cadet branches trimmed; the current Lord was a distant cousin of the previous, pro-Targaryen one. Lord Gerold was currently singing, red-faced, arm in arm with the King, a goblet in his other hand- a far cry from the troubled, terrified spectre who had shown up to welcome their meagre fleet to Gulltown.

Moreover, Gulltown had produced Petyr Baelish. That alone was enough to lower Tyrion's opinion of the place. Still, there was work to be done. He sighed, heavily, and pushed himself off his chair with a grunt, waddling out of the hall as inconspicuously as possible. The longer the King caroused with the great and good of Gulltown, the more time Tyrion had to speak to the smallfolk and identify viable options to replace those he'd called to King's Landing or given up to the Iron Bank.

That had been something of a bone of contention between him and Joffrey. Why, he'd asked, would you have smallfolk handle customs? The answer was that there weren't enough nobles, and the calculation was detached enough to seem mad. But it did have some sense. He'd worked his own thoughts into the bargain, though, including a noble at the very top. It was an able, incorruptible noble whom he sought, tonight.

The Grafton keep was a collection of towers, each of them built from bricks which were tinged yellow- mayhaps a hint to their coat of arms- and the dining hall, which was filled to the brim with carousers, was located between two of those. Tyrion made his way down the steps gingerly. He might have paid for the company of the whore a few days ago, but now… he didn't feel like it. Even the thought made him feel as though he might be sick. The word made bile rise in his throat, even as he rolled it around in his mouth. Whore. Silver coins. Lannisters are worth more.

He thought of Tysha.

The Crown was still in debt to the Tyrells, to the Faith, to his own father, to the Braavosi. Of these, the greatest creditor was the Braavosi- and yet some headway had been made with regards to all but those debts owed to House Lannister. Naturally, House Lannister would not release its leverage over the Crown so easily… not while a son of Tywin Lannister held the position of Master of Coin.

Tyrion Lannister tapped his foot as Baratheon men fell into position behind him. Grafton men held the door for him, and he ambled out into the night.

The thing that had once been the Dragonpit loomed over me as I made my ponderous way under the concrete arches.

It was large and sprawling, was this new compound, built to house my new bureaucracy. It was still a work in progress- very much a work in progress- but all work had been halted to allow for vast numbers of men to fill its yawning spaces. The Grey Keep (as I had dubbed it) loomed over the city, almost but not quite filling every spare surface on Rhaenys' Hill. Towers studded its surface, of varying heights, and the whole thing was three storeys tall. Its walls were unadorned; it resembled nothing as much as a giant cinder block.

Minstrels lined the walls, strumming and singing as I walked in.

"And who are you, the proud lord said, that I must bow so low?" went the song. The music swelled around me as I strode in, the antlered lion glaring from my chest, a simple circlet on my brow. The crowd parted before me. Men of the City Watch and House Lannister marched at my back, a few of them glaring at one another. Grandfather had loaned me a few men. Even now, he was like as not watching from one of the darker corners of the Grey Keep.

"And so he spoke, and so he spoke, that Lord of Castamere-" the bards sang. I held my fist up- and they stopped. Another thrum of power shot down my spine; Little Joffrey twitched. Sometimes, the older songs were better. I was a bit miffed at myself for mangling Horst-Wessel-Lied so. Those folk who said that fascist aesthetics were compelling and so on- they weren't kidding. I guess I was a fascist, then.

I raised my arm aloft.

"Heil Baratheon! Heil Baratheon! Heil Lannister! Heil Lannister! Heil Joffrey! Heil Joffrey! Heil Joffrey! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!"

Of course, I couldn't trust them all to cut off at the same time. That was why there were some of my men sprinkled in the crowd, prompting them with their elbows- and their steel, if it came to that.

"Whose men are you?"

"Yours, my Prince!"

"Good," I murmured, and then raised my voice back again to a shout. "You would do well to remember it, my men. Today I wish to speak of Baelish, the Braavosi fraud."

A roar of fury went up from the crowd. I hoped it was aimed at him.

"In his time alive, the swine stole from the Crown. You stole from the Crown. Your lives are forfeit." Spears banged on the floor as the crowd started to panic. "And you have died- but been reborn! No longer do you serve the Mockingbird! Now you serve a greater purpose, one larger than any one of you- you serve the Iron Throne! As it should always have been!"

More shouts of my name. I rolled my eyes.

"Baelish left a slimy trail of businesses in his wake when he died. Now I will render them unto you! You, my men, will hold them in trust to the Crown. To me."

Silence. I had thought this through- men from the Reach would be sent from the Vale, and men from the North be sent to Dorne. I wanted them disoriented and confused- yet not incapable of doing their jobs. After all, what was the difference between a wine merchant and a silk merchant apart from the commodities he bought and sold?

"When you came to me, you brought with you a list of the properties that you held in Baelish's name. Now I render them back unto you- but with an additional demand."

It had been a terrible idea, uprooting Baelish's men from their businesses and forcing them to choose between certain death and utter, slavish subservience to the Crown. Whichever action they took- and there was no middle ground- their businesses would lay fallow. I had asked some of the men- they revealed that they had put subordinates, apprentices, men free of Baelish's taint in place. I kept tabs on them regardless- or, shall I say, Qyburn would keep tabs on them for me regardless.

"Ask and it shall be done! We serve at your will alone!" This shout was a bit softer than it had any right to be; perhaps most of the men in the crowd were thinking quite hard about what this might mean for them.

"I render unto you the properties, but with them I include a quota. You are to earn- without bribery, in accordance with the laws of gods and men as laid down by my father the King and those before him- a certain number of gold dragons every year. Nine-tenths of those gold dragons are to be conveyed to King's Landing, to be spent at the Crown's convenience-" mostly servicing loans, "-and a tenth will remain with you, to pay your workers and as a reward to yourself."

A shout went up. I held up a hand.

"These quotas are impossible to meet- that I know," I shouted, as carefully as I dared. "But that is precisely why they exist! They exist to give you a goal to work towards. And- mark this- if you ever meet this quota, you will earn for yourself half of your revenue for that year, and the Crown will only take half!"

Cheers. "Our Prince is great," one fellow wept, the poor schmuck.

"But my Masters are ever-watching-" and then I gestured at the defrocked Maesters (I hadn't settled on a proper name for them yet), perched above the crowd of yellow-cloaked souls. "And if they find that you have taken a bribe, or committed any such crime similar in magnitude to that of Baelish- or committed any crime, for that matter-" My voice hardened. "Then you will be stripped of all that you own. Your family's lives are forfeit. We will hunt you down, over marsh, over mountain, over field, over the Narrow Sea. We have the Iron Bank's word on this."

The room was silent again.

"If you think yourselves unsuited to the task, then say so. There is no shame in doing so."

No one said anything. I'd probably have to make good on the threats I'd made today. Oh well. Such is life.

"You would rob the highborn of their dignity," Grandfather said. His voice was cold, steady, and utterly without emotion.

"'Tis just commerce," I replied, glancing around at his chambers. There were still a few Lannister tapestries that hadn't quite rotten through since the last time he'd visited. "A bank would give us leverage with our lessers. If we hold the bank, we hold the smallfolk even tighter than we do now. With a bank we might even be able to emulate the Free Cities-" I cringed even before he spoke.

"And tell me, Prince Joffrey, why we might want to emulate the Free Cities." His voice was stony.

I took a deep breath and plunged. "The Free Cities are not richer than we are- no one is-" here's hoping he liked the ego-stroking- "-but they have knowledge, the likes of which we need-"

"Again. Why do we need the Free Cities?" He tilted his head slightly, inquisitively. It was getting really hard for me not to be intimidated. "We have everything we need in Westeros. The Free Cities exist only to sell Myrish carpets, Pentosi peach-liquor, Braavosi loans. Everything we need is here."

"What if we could make them here? Steal the secrets of smithing from Qohor. We could have ourselves ten swords of Valyrian steel." I hated this. I was beneath this tripe- giving a fucking marketing pitch to a stupid old man. "Valyrian roads would make it far faster for us to move from one corner of the Realm to the other. If the Gold Road were a Valyrian one, our men would be the fastest in Westeros." I was getting desperate. "And besides, the bank need not be housed in King's Landing."

"Then where?" Grandfather regarded me impassively.

"Casterly Rock. A golden bank to match the iron one." I smiled with a confidence I didn't have.

"You seek to tie us to the Crown."

I threw my hands in the air. "I'm giving Casterly Rock the right to set the value of currency across the Realm. Depending on how much gold and silver we mint, we could single-handedly collapse whole kingdoms." I left blank how exactly that would be done, because I didn't know myself. "Still, if that is what you think, Grandfather, I respect your decision."

"Very good."

I blinked.

"At least a grandson of mine is willing to acknowledge my authority." His eyes were warmer, now, marginally so, as though my thoughts on catapulting House Lannister to even greater heights had been entirely forgotten. "Your mother and uncles have forgotten who is the head of this house." He leaned back in his chair and made a few markings on the records. "And well done with the smallfolk. You have them well in hand."

"...my thanks?" I couldn't help the way my voice went up at the end.

In that instant, I knew what I had to do.

Last edited: Jan 11, 2018


	7. ghostchance1

Prologue

I woke up in a pitch-black room and feeling like my head had been packed full of cotton wool. The last time I'd been this out of it was when I'd been delirious with fever from an ear infection when I was seven… no, wait, that was totally wrong, I'd never had an ear infection. Why did I remember being sick like that if I'd never been?

As I pondered that problem I noticed that I was softly giggling to myself, amused at how my thoughts were not only moving in slow motion and looping around and around inside drunken sailors. Wait, what was that thought? Drunk. No, I never drank. Drugged. I'm on drugs. Why am I on drugs?

This was about the time I noticed my eyes were shut. Well, no wonder it was so dark! I opened my eyes, squinting against the glare of the overhead lights, and tried to focus…

… and with that thought suddenly my mind snapped into total focus, my veins flooding with ice-water as I went from high off my ass on prescription-strength anti-psychotic meds to 100% alert and awake in zero seconds flat. Which was biologically impossible.

In the several minutes of time before the duty nurse entered the room to check on me, having been summoned by the sudden change in my vitals as measured by the machines I was hooked up to, I'd had time to finish reviewing my recent memories and working out the basics of what was going on.

I was Taylor Hebert. I was waking up in the hospital after having been shoved into my own locker at school after the bullies had first packed it full of used feminine hygiene products and then locked in there for hours and left to rot. The staff had had to sedate me because I'd been incoherent and freaked out on the prior occasions I'd roused to semi-consciousness, which psychiatric protocol was also why I'd woken up strapped to the hospital bed by wrists and ankles. It was January 5, 2011, and I was in Brockton Bay on Earth-Bet.

And I really shouldn't be here.

Author's Note: Being Taylor Is Suffering. :)

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

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Initiation 1.1

"Miss Hebert?" the nurse asked, with that particular vocal and facial emphasis on 'reassuring' that I'd learned to associate with psychiatric orderlies. "How are you feeling?"

I tried to put a reassuring smile on my face. "Better," I replied, figuring that sticking to short answers would be a good strategy. "Was I on medication earlier? Everything before now was really… fuzzy."

Since I already knew that I should still be heavily medicated, I wasn't surprised at the nurse's slight hesitation on answering. My sudden return to lucidity was probably not reassuring. "Your father gave us permission to sedate you," she said. Probably trying to keep me from freaking out by invoking parental authority. "How much do you remember?"

My newfound mental focus almost tripped me up there. I was about to reply to her question in a completely objective manner when I had a hunch that being too matter-of-fact would probably alarm her further. I was supposed to be a hot mess right now, after all. So, I stopped myself mid-word and deliberately hesitated before I continued on in a lower tone of voice. "I remember the locker."

She nodded. "You were under extreme stress when the paramedics got you out of the locker," the nurse continued. I decided to save her from having to soft-pedal the issue and myself some time by pre-empting her.

"That's why I'm in restraints?" I asked.

"Yes," my nurse agreed with mild embarassment. "They needed two people to hold you down before you could be sedated, and the protocols for that mean patient restraints until they can be evaluated." She paused and continued. "You said you were feeling better?"

"Whatever you gave me must have worked," I agreed with her. "I'm not great, but I don't feel… out of control."

"That's very good, Taylor," she agreed. "You don't have to talk about what happened right now, if you don't want to. The doctor will be in to see you shortly."

"Can you untie me now?"

"That's your attending physician's decision, I'm sorry."

"Well, I kinda need to-" I trailed off.

Man, bedpans are so humiliating.

Out of all the damn CYOAs I've ever filled out, why did ROB have to pick this one to use? I'd done a lot of other CYOAs that I'd much rather have had come true than Worm v1 CYOA.

Totally OP ones like Living Hyperion or Last of the Omega Lords. Comfy ones like Time-Stop Chill Zone. I'd even used the Worm CYOA for other builds than this one. I mean, it would have been a lot less worrisome if I was a World Breaker right now. I suppose it was at least a mild saving grace that I wasn't stuck with one of my Skitter Mode builds. So thanks at least for that much, ROB.

Still, Hard Mode was going to be rough enough, especially combined with Being Taylor Is Suffering. And I didn't have one of the 'easy' powers like Kaleidoscope or Eidolon or Power Manipulation. No "kill Scion on day one" for me. No, I'd taken Inspired Inventor. Which was admittedly very nice at the top end, but had perhaps the slowest ramp-up to the top end out of them all.

Well, at least I'd remembered to get the Blank-Shattered Limiter-Invictus survival kit that all the better builds used. And my Complication was at least a sort of blessing in disguise too, given that it meant I wasn't a homeless person with $100 right now. The Hebert household guaranteed me three hots and a cot, and a chance to get through the most vulnerable stage in the Tinker Cycle before I was on anyone else's radar. If I kept my head down and didn't do anything stupid I'd have months of time to spend Inspired Inventor charges and start scrounging for parts. Even in canon I'd gone all the way to April from now before my first outing as Skitter…

Damn it! There I go again!

Even with Invictus, simultaneously being Taylor Hebert and John Mueller was confusing as hell. And the problem wasn't 'two separate minds fighting it out inside one skull'. That would actually be easier than what I was going through right now. No, I was getting the literal wording of the CYOA doc – being born into Earth-Bet, living out the life of Taylor Hebert, and then gaining all the memories of the me who'd filled out the CYOA. So I had two separate lifetimes' worth of memories but both of them were in first-person. I was simultaneously a nervous wreck of a teenaged girl who'd been driven into a nervous breakdown by a protracted campaign of psychological and physical abuse, and a disabled veteran who had spent over half a lifetime recovering from the nervous breakdown that had gotten him discharged from the Navy even before his injuries caught up with him. I simultaneously had never eaten rice before and remembered it as a staple part of my diet, was both the kid who'd never experienced any serious childhood diseases and the one who'd almost gotten a burst eardrum at age seven from a bacterial infection, was the one who had almost suffocated to death inside a pile of rotting waste in a school locker and the one who'd almost drowned to death in a flooding incident onboard a supply ship in the Indian Ocean…

Okay, thank God for Invictus or else the duty nurse would be back in here injecting me with the Thorazine again after that one. Bad thoughts. Baaaaad thoughts.

So, yeah. The identity crisis from two separate minds overlaid into one would have been hard enough in two perfectly healthy and well-adjusted people, let alone one where a recovering hot mess had been forcibly injected into an ongoing hot mess. And according to the exact wording of the CYOA, I would "still require time and effort to properly recover" even with everything my powers and perks could do for me. Normally it wouldn't be that way, but Being Taylor Is Suffering. So while my conscious thinking would be perfectly fine thanks to Invictus, my likes and dislikes and unconscious biases and whatnot were probably going to be even more jangled up than they already were. So I'd have to keep an eye out for that.

Well, in the category of 'turning that frown upside down' at least being under restraints as a potential psychiatric patient in the hospital and waiting God only knows how long for the duty psychiatrist to get around to interviewing you meant you had time to sort out your thoughts. Which is what I'd just gotten through doing. And another potential benefit of having been put into psychiatric evaluation is that you had a ready-made excuse for any sudden changes in your behavior patterns in the future.

I decided to hold off on putting any Inspired Inventor charges into medicine or psychiatry or self-help techniques just yet. I still had to get through the upcoming interview - if not series of interviews - if I ever wanted to get these damn straps taken off. And my experience as John prompted me that telling a psychiatrist all the things the diagnostic checklist said was 'all right' only worked if you weren't already under suspicion. If you were, doing that instead became a warning sign that 'this guy has read the checklist, is parroting it back to you, and is trying to hide something'.

No, wait. I was going to spend a charge right now, given that I was already doing it. Besides, I wanted to see how this power actually worked. Time for a test run on something that I can actually work with right now, seeing as how I don't have parts, tools, or the ability to move any of my limbs. But I was already working out how to adapt best to my situation, so…

Adaptation, 1 charge.

Whoa. So this is what Inspired Inventor does.

My mind skimmed along the surface of an endless sea of information for a single indivisible instant, and concepts and data rolled into me. Now, since the amount of useful knowledge given you by Inspired Inventor went deeper and deeper as the concept you spent the charge on got narrower and narrower and the concept of 'adaptation' was so broad, I wasn't going to be building any wonder devices just on this one charge alone.

Still, I felt the knowledge that Inspired Inventor had just given me seamlessly slot into place and integrate with everything I already knew about and knew how to do, giving me new ways of looking at it all. Dimly glimpsed concepts and algorithms seemed to shift deep in my subconscious, prompting me with new habits for evaluating and categorizing objects and phenomena. Things as diverse as how the human immune system adapted to bacterial exposure to how to repurpose a salt shaker as an improvised blinding weapon in a bar fight all seemed to resonate with my mind as I thought about them, even if I couldn't actually hope to design any immune-system boosters or win any bar fights without spending charges on the related subject matter as well. Still, even with this alone my mind now felt like it had a slight new edge, a way of looking at the world that was a little more… resourceful.

And a good thing to. Because with all that was yet to come, I was going to need all the resourcefulness I could get.

Turns out that all I needed to do to get the straps taken off was to convince the attending psychiatrist that I was not actually going to be biting people in the immediate future. I suppose it helped that I had a clear and present reason for being so irrational at the scene, so the trauma was understandable. And even more reassuringly, while I was still going to be held for observation for a few days I would get to do it as a recovering surgical patient instead of as someone in the neuro ward.

Much less reassuring was me finding out exactly what kind of "surgery" I was recovering from. Not that any of the doctors would discuss it with me except in the vaguest terms – apparently there was still a 'Do Not Stress Out' notation on me, plus as a minor they could put off health questions with 'That's for your dad' – but now that I had freedom of movement back, I could just snag the chart off the foot of my bed.

Medicine, 1 charge.

And now that I could read it, having magically gained the knowledge of an experienced physician and surgeon, I could… oh dear God that is a lot of notations in red.

The short version is that they'd had to call in Panacea to keep me alive, let alone leave me still attached to all four of my limbs. That biohazardous waste that the Bitches Three had put into my locker had apparently been festering there since before Christmas. By the time Sophia had shoved me into it, it had festered into something worse than the stuff that was in the medical waste dumpster downstairs out behind the Pathology lab. At least nobody left that one sitting unattended for over a week. So, between being literally soaked in that… stuff… for several hours, as well as all the gashes and cuts I'd given myself thrashing around in there, by the time they'd gotten me out I was beyond terminally infected with the everything.

Wait, if it was this bad then how the heck did they get away with- I mean, in the story, nobody seemed to care that I'd almost died- but this looked like outright attempted murder here-

Ohhhhh, right. I hadn't told anyone anything. In fact, if I remembered my reading of Worm correctly I'd basically been out of it for an entire week during my psych evaluation and then barely talking to anyone after that. I hadn't even told my dad. So, while the doctors were still very upset over what had been done to me from a medical point of view, from a "the authorities" point of view they weren't- they weren't…

… they weren't going to be able to fully investigate anything where the victim refused to even confirm that there had been a crime. I mean, my total not saying anything meant that they couldn't even prove that I'd been forced into that locker. Oh, sure, anybody not brain-dead could infer that I hadn't entered that of my own free will, but officially? How could they establish that I hadn't gone temporarily insane and jumped in myself? I'd certainly been temporarily insane enough when they finally cut the lock off to get me out! And of course there'd be an entire school full of students willing to tell anyone who asked that I was a crazy loner weirdo, and thanks to the Trio's best efforts a look at my school transcripts would show a massive slide in grades and classroom participation over the past year and a half…

So there would be, as they say, a reasonable doubt. A reasonable doubt that in hindsight Emma and Sophia and Madison had sailed right through with flying colors. The overworked and underpaid Brockton Bay PD still wouldn't turn a blind eye to attempted murder, but my own refusal to cooperate had left them without the pieces they'd need to actually hope to call it attempted murder and not get laughed right out of the office by even a divorce lawyer like Alan Barnes, let alone an experienced criminal attorney.

Taylor Hebert, you were stupid. You were an idiot. You were Miss Thick Thickety-Thickface from Thicktown, Thickania. And so was my dad, for not getting the full story out of the doctors instead of apparently just stopping at 'Panacea healed all the damage, she's fine now. Physically.'

At least John's point of view was from someone old enough to know better about this kind of thing. Which is why my future mistakes were now so obvious in hindsight-

Ugh. There I went again with the confoozled verb tenses.

Yet again pushing aside the whole 'memories of the story of my life yet to come that was from the memories of someone reincarnated into my earlier life and changing the whole thing' issue to where it belonged – i.e., for later – I focused back on the immediate issue. Okay, Taylor. Let it be resolved. The first official-type person with a badge that I see, I am telling them everything about the bullying. Let's see those bitches get away with it now, now that their victim has finally figured out that just pretending its not happening and hoping it goes away is not going to work.

A resolution that was then immediately tested when said first official-type people with badges turned out to be not the police, but the PRT.

Author's Note: Taylor was indeed in psychiatric evaluation for a week after waking up in the hospital in canon, likewise her refusing to tell anybody anything about what actually happened. Likewise, the PRT showing up to investigate is canon (reread your Shell 4.3), but Taylor was too out of it to even speak to them so they went away.

The remainder is all stuff that was inferred, or fanon. If my particular interpretation of Worm fanon is not yours, well, that's what happens in fanfic.

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

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Threadmarks Initiation 1.2

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Jul 7, 2019

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#4

Initiation 1.2

Why the hell was the PRT here?

This didn't happen the last time- the time that I read about in that web serial… aggggh! Why didn't I pay more attention to Worm when I was John? As is, I knew the outline of the story, and a lot of the more popular stations of the canon that made it into all the fanfics, and even some wiki research as to which ones were and weren't fanon. But I didn't know everything, and I certainly didn't know this. You'd think something as important as a visit from the PR-freaking-T this soon after her trigger would stick in - hell with it, call her "story-me" from now on for convenience's sake - stick in her mind?

… no, it wouldn't, because I was completely out of it for a week in the story-timeline. Now I have Invictus and am operating at full efficiency on day one. So story-me probably did talk to these guys, but didn't even register it.

"Do I have to speak to them? Am I in trouble?" I asked the nurse, who'd come in to inform me that the PRT wanted to talk to me and had been standing there patiently waiting for me to reboot my brain and answer. Well, being taken aback was normal enough under the circumstances I suppose.

"I… the interview is required, yes," said the nurse. "Given the circumstances under which you were admitted…"

"Do I have to talk to them before my dad gets here?" I asked the nurse, trying to stall for time. Meanwhile my thoughts were racing, trying to estimate how fucked was fucked here. Having read the story I already knew that Sophia Hess was Shadow Stalker, even if story-me hadn't found out until the worst possible time. So if their their master computer had pinged off 'Sophia Hess' turning up in my incident report and the cover-up squad was already here… no, that doesn't make sense. "Nobody saw anything" at Winslow, and I damn sure haven't told anyone who pushed me in yet, so how could Sophia's name be in any reports? God damn, I wish I'd gotten a power that could let me know what the hell these guys wanted before I had to start answering their questions…

Wait. It can't be that easy, can it?

PRT Agent Training – 1 charge.

I barely heard the nurse telling me that the PRT had called my dad and he was on his way over from his office even now, as the skills and knowledge of a trained PRT field operative melded themselves into my consciousness. I already knew some things from my general cape geekdom online, such as all the power classifications, but now I understood the PRT Threat Rating scale in detail. I understood that the numbers didn't measure the magnitude of the powers so much as they measured how threatening a particular cape was in a particular category and what preset tactics from the SOP should be used.

But Inspired Inventor gave you not just knowledge but also "skill at applying it". I felt an entire new library of motions, of techniques and skills, settle into my muscle memory as if they'd always been there. I could field-strip and re-assemble an assault rifle and then take it out on the combat course and shoot an "Expert" qualification score with it, throw confoam grenades like a champ, coordinate movements with the rest of an agent squad, search and clear a building, evaluate and respond to hostile capes…

And given that Inspired Inventor let the first charge into a power leave you at PRT Rating 4-5 whenever possible, and PRT Rating 4 is "one full squad of trained operatives should be able to deal with this situation alone but exceptional circumstance, context and environment may bias things one way or the other" that meant I'd instantly gone from a teenaged girl who barely knew how to make a fist to someone skilled enough at it to take on an entire squad of PRT agents. Solo. Or at least I would be once I was in fighting shape and got my hands on something at least equivalent to their combat gear, because right now I was an unarmed hospital patient. So there would be no dramatically escaping Agent Smith out there just yet.

Still, depending on what you asked Inspired Inventor for some charges returned better dividends than others. And this charge had just come packed with all kinds of stuff. It wasn't just the combat training I'd gotten. I'd asked for "Agent Training", not just "Agent Combat Training". So I'd gotten the full package, every professional skill a veteran PRT field agent was expected to have in the normal course of their duties. How to do search-and-rescue work, how to stabilize and evacuate wounded, how to fill out PRT paperwork, how to conduct eyewitness interviews…

… oh. That's why they're here. The PRT investigates trigger events, too. They have Tinkertech-programmed and Thinker-designed algorithms continually searching news and emergency services incident reports, set to flag moments of extreme trauma that fit certain profiles. And according to my medical chart it's now officially on-record that I have a corona pollentia, because being admitted as a critical trauma patient with a possible psychiatric hold on top of that meant that they did an MRI on my head looking for possible tumors or brain damage. And if someone who's already flagged as a possible trigger event also had a corona pollentia on their medical record then the PRT would try to be right on top of them, to make sure that some unstable new cape isn't being left alone in a hospital bed to fester into the next Damsel of Distress without anyone noticing. So, call it 95 out of 100 that they're not here because of Sophia. They're here for me. And they're not here to threaten me or try to silence me.

As the nurse turned and left to go fetch my dad and the PRT agents, I began to relax a little. I could work with this. But I'd have to be very careful.

"Dad!" I cried, as my father entered the room. He looked the same as he always did, tall and thin like me, glasses balanced on his nose, a bald spot… I blinked and felt a momentary confusion, when did he get so tall and thin? When did he look so defeated? Oh, right. That was John's father, the large heavyset man with a confident attitude- I felt a phantom pain, an imagined shadow of the migraine this dual identity crap would have been giving me without Invictus.

"Taylor," he said diffidently, as if he was afraid I was about to break. "How are you feeling?"

"I got shoved in a locker and almost died is how I'm feeling," I said angrily. "How should I be-" I stopped myself on seeing my dad's flinch. Where had that come from? Focus, Taylor!

The nurse and the PRT agent entering immediately on my dad's heels stopped before they crashed into him. Being on an investigation rather than a potential combat mission he was wearing a dark suit with a discreet earbud and slightly oversized suit jacket to better hide his hip-holstered sidearm, as opposed to the normal PRT assault gear of Kevlar-backed chainmail mesh, assault rifle, and confoam grenade launcher. A part of my mind automatically noted which side of his hip the very discreet bulge was on and noted that he was right-handed.

"Someone pushed you into the locker, Miss Hebert?" he asked me, interrupting what my dad was going to say. "You were assaulted?"

"Yes," I answered firmly. "I damn sure didn't fill it up and crawl in there by myself."

"I don't imagine you did," the agent said, involuntarily quirking his lip despite himself.

"Taylor, this is Agent Jordan of the PRT," my dad broke in, turning to face him even as he introduced him. "And they're here to ask you questions about-?" he finished warily, almost challengingly.

Having been put on notice Agent Jordan sighed and showed me his credentials - photo ID as well as badge, anybody can have a badge saying anything but it's the photo ID that's the important part – identifying him as a field agent of the Parahuman Response Team. He began his pitch in a bureaucratically matter-of-fact voice. "Miss Hebert, it's standard procedure in certain situations for the PRT to interview-"

"It's only a PRT matter if parahumans are involved," I interrupted. "And I haven't had a chance to say anything to anyone yet about who shoved me in. So either they've already been found and arrested and one of them's actually a parahuman, or you think I'm one." Wait, why did I say that? Does Invictus remove the brain-to-mouth filter? Mouth shut ears open Taylor!

Agent Jordan stopped and cocked his head a little, looking at me with a renewed eagerness. "You put that together on very few clues. Yes, Miss Hebert. Situations involving extreme emotional stress under certain conditions have been known to be causes of 'trigger events', the events during which parahumans gain their powers."

"If that happened to every girl who'd ever been attacked, Brockton Bay would have more parahumans than the Birdcage," my dad cut in sarcastically. Hah!

"Yes, but in your daughter's cause her medical records also show that she has a corona pollentia." Agent Jordan held up his hand to forestall the obvious questions. "Which is a particular organ found only in the brains of those who have the potential to undergo a trigger event."

"My daughter got brain scanned and nobody even told me?" my dad demanded angrily.

"Mr. Hebert, please!" the nurse cut in urgently. "Your daughter was admitted to the emergency room as a very serious patient with a head injury as well as… possible neurological damage. An MRI is part of the standard admission protocols for such situations." Which I supposed was a polite way of telling an upset parent 'She was temporarily loco in the coco.'

Taking the hint that he couldn't sue the hospital for something that was officially part of immediately necessary lifesaving treatment on someone being wheeled into the ER because that didn't need parental permission, and completely missing the hint that the PRT had already looked at my medical records without asking for said permission, my dad turned back to Agent Jordan. "That's it? She was stressed and she has something in her brain so you're automatically assuming-?"

"No, sir. Based just on what I've seen so far, your daughter is likely enough to be a parahuman that I would recommend her for powers testing and evaluation."

"So far?" I asked quickly, both to figure out how far they'd already gotten and to head off a possible eruption of Mt. St. Hebert.

Agent Jordan turned back to me with a relieved smile. "Are you aware of the powers classification system, Miss Hebert?" Stupid conversation redirection. Fine, I'll play along.

"Mover, Shaker, Brute, and Breaker. Master, Thinker, Blaster, Tinker. Striker, Changer, Trump, and Stranger," I completed the familiar chant.

"Yes," he agreed. "And Thinkers in particular are people with abilities related to enhanced perception, cogitation, or mental focus. Such as your ability to remain perfectly calm and lucid despite being very recently off an extreme psychological ordeal and recovering from sedatives. Or that masterful piece of deduction you pulled off a minute ago as to why I was really here."

Oh joy. Invictus plus having read the PRT playbook before he entered the room equals me being far enough ahead of where I should be that he's mistaking me for Tattletale. No wonder he's so eager, the PRT can never get enough Thinkers on their side. Except that I'm not one so, whoops.

"I don't feel any more intelligent than normal," I replied. "I mean, yeah, I'm not freaking out right now and I'm sort of willpowering through the meds but I don't need parahuman powers for that. I mean, just ask my dad about how stubborn I can get when I'm trying to push through something."

"Oh, can she ever," my dad readily confirmed.

"And to be honest," I said, cutting Agent Jordan off before he could start the lecture about Thinkers, "what I really want to talk about right now is how to press charges for being shoved into that locker." I focused my attention on him as intently as I could without being obvious about it, looking for the smallest reactions to my next calculated statement. "But I probably need to talk to the Brockton Bay PD about Sophia Hess, not you." And despite Agent Jordan's best professional poker pace, I saw him momentarily twitch when I dropped that name.

Yes!

I was a little surprised and upset that Agent Jordan didn't immediately leap into a storm of curiosity at that name. As a Probationary Ward, not a regular Ward, Sophia's secret ID would be more loosely kept around the office because her life both in and out of costume should have been under a higher level of monitoring, even if the system had cataclysmically failed in her case. Yet despite his twitch having indicated that Agent Jordan was in the loop regarding "Sophia Hess is Shadow Stalker", he didn't try to follow it up! Instead he just rushed through the rest of his 'potentially a cape' interview with me as perfunctorily as possible.

I was inwardly fuming at how little anybody seemed to care about doing their job until as a 'professional courtesy' Agent Jordan pulled out his cell phone and called 'a friend' at the Brockton Bay PD himself, just 'to save my father a trip to the police station'. Wait, if he wanted to bury this then why-? Oh, right.

After having used a conversational opener of 'The PRT only investigates parahuman-related cases' and then not confirming that I was a parahuman, Agent Jordan couldn't show any obvious interest in Sophia Hess without outing her as one. So he got just enough out of me to make sure that I wasn't talking about any other Sophia, then very helpfully gets the BBPD onto the case to finish getting the rest of it out of me as if it was just routine juvenile crime. Then all the PRT has to do is yoink a copy of the police report for themselves and then they have my statement without me knowing that they got it.

The part where I'm still at least halfway-suspected of being a Thinker is probably contributing to their extra helping of discretion here… if they really do think I'm Tattletale 2.0 then they won't want to be in the same room with me, let alone trying to recruit me, until after they've checked out the whole Shadow Stalker thing.

So I resolved to patiently wait for the police like a good little girl, and give them my eyewitness statements, and a copy of my diary with all the log entries about all the various bullying incidents of the past year, and everything. And then I'd wait to see what they did about it. This time I'd give them a chance to do the right thing before I gave up on them.

One chance.

Of course, going this route also meant that I had to tell my dad everything.

Oh well, good thing I'm doing it now while I'm still in a hospital bed. At least here there's only so loud he can yell at me.

Author's Note: So far this thing is moving like molasses in January trying to flow uphill. I mean, three sections and I'm not even out of the hospital room yet. My muse is, as ever, doing exactly what it wants and ignoring me. Let's just hope it has follow-through this time.

And dialing in exactly how Taylor's identity issues plus Invictus are going to express themselves is very much a thing of 'I'll intuit this as it goes', so far.

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

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Threadmarks Initiation 1.3

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Jul 7, 2019

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#5

Initiation 1.3

After Agent Jordan left and I'd wrapped up the awkwardness with my dad, I'd been left alone to get to work with Inspired Inventor for real. And while I knew I needed to get my feet under me as quickly as I could I didn't want to end up like the proverbial absent-minded handyman who owned an entire basement full of specialized tools - but his basement was so badly organized that he couldn't find anything when he needed it and so just kept using the same old hammer, screwdriver, and wrench set that he kept right next to the bottom of the stairs. Or in my case, dumping so many separate fields of knowledge into my head that I focused only on the most obvious tricks that could be done with them and never took any time out to stop and think of more subtle applications. Now, maybe Inspired Inventor didn't work that way… but maybe it did. And so if a little patience might help keep me mentally organized better then okay, I could be patient.

It helped that my naval service had been in the engineering department, so I understood something of what a proper technical education should be like. And like in "A" school, it started with an overview of the fundamental principles underlying the mechanisms of what you learning how to build or fix. You didn't start doing maintenance on a steam boiler until you had enough basic physics to understand that the pressure of X mass of gas was in inverse proportion to the volume of the container and in direct proportion to its temperature, you didn't start working on electrical gear until you understand that the current between two points equaled the voltage across the conductor measured in volts divided by the resistance of the conductor measured in ohms, et cetera et cetera. And while Tinkertech apparently broke many of the laws of physics, I had a hunch that I could do a lot worse than to start out my quest for knowledge by understanding exactly which laws I was working with, and which ones I was working around, and which ones I was straight-up ignoring. And it was also time to test what would happen if I spent more than one charge on something, so…

Physics – 3 charges. …holy shit!

That particular download of knowledge left me staring at the hospital ceiling for several hours. Not that there'd been any problem with the number of charges spent – I hadn't taken any Skitter Mode limitations and three charges went down as easily as one did. Its just that I suddenly knew so much. The first charge gave me a mental chart of all the various sub-discliplines that comprised the entire field known as "physics", from astronomy to special relativity, and what their syllabus was and how they all interacted, and then a solid working knowledge of and reference library about each and every single sub-field. That first charge alone made me the equivalent of an entire conference room full of physics professors at a university.

And then the next two charges… well, the formal definition of physics is "the natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force". And you can already see that that covers a tremendous amount of ground. Even three charges wouldn't give me total knowledge of it all – hell, ten charges might not. In fact, I had a feeling that no matter how many charges I kept putting into this there would always be new revelations, new applications and synergies and subtleties, always coming into view as my mental horizons expanded farther and farther. I could imagine some other fields of knowledge that eventually ran out of new things to discover, but I just had to make my first serious Inspired Inventor charge dump be into 'how the multiverse fundamentally works', which would almost certainly be a limitless expanse. Ambitious much?

At any rate, even the one big bite I'd taken out of the physics pie left me in an afternoon-long nerd rapture. At three charges I not only knew essentially everything that modern science had discovered but had gone on to download a ton of spoilers for things we hadn't discovered. For things that no instruments on Earth even existed to discover. For example, the Higgs boson had only been theorized about in 1965 but the particle accelerator needed to confirm its existence hadn't even finished construction yet. But I now knew it existed, not just as a theory but as a fact, and could rattle off its exact properties and interactions in full confidence that when physicists finally caught up to where I was now standing, their experimental results would jibe with everything I'd just downloaded. But it wasn't just weird particles, even if part of my head was absently noting how the Higgs boson's interaction with mass along with several of the equations for spacetime curvature could theoretically be adapted for a Tinkertech gravity generator if a suitable projector could be designed and built…

Having an exponentially increased understanding of how and why stuff worked meant that these principles would underlay everything I designed and built from now on. Tinkertech was still bullshit, but by knowing what was possible under the mundane physical laws of our universe I could optimize any devices I built so that bending or breaking said laws could be saved only for those functions where such was essential and not waste any of the device's efforts on reinventing any wheels that didn't need to be reinvented…

Hrm. There's a thought. Spending charges not on 'how to build amazing gizmos' right away (although the amazing gizmos would come soon enough!), but instead on meta-knowledge fields, things that aren't about directly making Tinkertech but instead underlay and shape the way I design and build Tinkertech. For example, I already knew that not only would any devices I built be at least slightly more adaptable to different operating conditions unless I deliberately made zero effort to put that functionality in, because of my Adaptability charge, but having a vast and deep knowledge of the foundations of physical science also meant that my devices would be less 'eldritch abomination' and more 'ultra-refined futuretech' in their approach whenever possible.

So, hrm. Four charges left for day one. I decided to spend three and leave one deliberately unspent to test whether or not unspent charges rolled over into the following day or were just lost. If I can save them up that will take some pressure off my mind. Without needing to worry about 'wasting' charges I could manage the rate at which I was dumping entire new bodies of knowledge into my mind, as well save unspent charges for use in an emergency. Otherwise, I'd have to be dumping all ten charges into new things every day and that could rapidly result in the 'too much library, not enough card catalog' problem I was trying to avoid.

So, what's most important to keep in mind when building a gizmo? Rhetorical! The answer is "making sure the damned thing doesn't blow up in your face". So, Quality Control – 1 charge and Safety Engineering – 1 charge. And my gizmos will already be adaptable so what's the converse to those two? Making sure it isn't a delicately adaptable hangar queen. And so, Ruggedization – 1 charge.

There we go. I may be doing miracle science from now on, but it won't be mad science. It will just be really really awesome science. That doesn't blow up, have nasty side effects, or break down at the first opportunity. Things like Ruggedization synergizing with Physics meant that I really understood how friction and thermal shock and vibration and resonance could all cause accumulated wear and tear on a mechanism and what design principles and material characteristics would best minimize that…

Wow, that is a lot of concepts and processes and laws and axioms and everything floating around up there. Hopefully this new knowledge rapture will start slowing down the more I learn and so the more I already understand things related to what I'm learning next.

But then the nurses started to wonder at my whole 'staring at the ceiling all afternoon' routine, so I mentally pushed it all to the side and ate my dinner and then started at least pretend to do something normal like read a book or watch the TV. Soon enough it was time for Taylor to go to sleep – hey, Invictus to power through mentally or not, physically I was still pretty damn weak and exhausted - and so I drifted off, waiting to see if my single unspent charge would be there in the morning and if sleeping on this whole mass of stuff I'd inspired into my brain would help sort it out better.

Seeing your life as a story written by someone else is so weird. Especially when you haven't actually lived through it yet.

The situation was complicated by the fact that while I was John I hadn't actually read Worm cover-to-cover. I'd originally gotten into the franchise via the fanfics showing up all over my favorite message board, and followed that to the web serial itself. However, the web serial was really long and depressing and so after a while I just started skimming and using the wikia and absorbing information via osmosis via all the forum threads to fill in the gaps. So I had an overview of the entire plot, knew all of the big reveals, and had a mostly complete outline of events. But my not having read everything in detail meant that I lacked context for a goodly amount of this stuff. And most of all, I lacked context on what had been going on in my own head during the storyline.

Seriously. Just because I remembered having read all this stuff in a story didn't mean I'd actually been there or done it yet. So even if I knew that in one particular timeline I would do all these things, I could barely understand why I'd done some of them. I abandoned my lifelong dream of being a hero to go villain? I took over Brockton Bay as some kind of warlord? I killed Alexandria? I took over the world as some kind of Master-12? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, over?

But even worse than that were the parts of the story where I did understand what I had been thinking.

It was the reincarnation memories that had tipped the scale for me, of course. When I was John I'd gotten invalided out of the service after a massive nervous breakdown, and had been through all the outpatient therapy at the VA for that. So getting all those memories as Taylor meant that I could use the benefit of that reincarnated hindsight plus the support of Invictus to look back on the patterns I'd already been falling into, and which according to the Worm serial I would fall into even harder. The exhausting, depressing, borderline suicidal patterns that I hadn't even noticed at the time.

The first mental faculty to start being eroded by exhaustion and stress is your judgement. All those PSAs about 'getting help' and 'learn to recognize the systems', that we all got in school and all laughed at, turned out to have a lot of sense to them. Sure, you'd think it would be obvious to you if you were starting to go off-center but ahahahahaha, nope. The way the human mind worked you were almost always the last person to notice that you weren't OK. Our brain's own ability to adapt to stress worked against us after a certain point, with the stubborn insistence that "I'm fine." drowning out the physical and emotional warning signs that no, you were not fine. The mental quality that was useful for getting through the normal slings and arrows of outrageous fortune stopped being good for you after a certain point, the point at which prolonged stress and danger reached a level where your body simply didn't have time to physically and emotionally recuperate before the next trauma came along. Every finite number could eventually be reduced to zero, and that included human fortitude. Even for the best and the bravest humans.

So despite a stubborn adolescence insisting that winners never quit and whiners never won, having already lived through it once as an adult and a military veteran was enough of a cluebat to get through and force me to admit that no, Taylor Hebert was officially hitting the end of her rope. Zero support system plus the most vulnerable period of adolescence plus a year and a half of constant gaslighting and emotional torture had used up 99.9% of all the endurance I had, and if I hadn't triggered and then escaped into the new life of a cape I'd have been lucky to go six more months without jumping off a bridge. Even then, it was practically Worm canon that jumping straight into that first fight with Lung in the story had been as much an unconscious suicide attempt as it had been an attempt to save people. And that my leaping to 'infiltrate' the Undersiders had been as much a desperately lonely girl leaping at the chance to make a friend with the first person to not act like an apathetic authority figure or a total asshole to me in months, even if she'd been a manipulative Thinker-7 combining a – I'd give Tattletale this much credit – genuine desire to stop a suicidally lonely girl from killing herself along with a self-serving scheme to try and improve her own position.

Seriously, according to the story me and Lisa had become pretty much sisters – and right now I wouldn't even know her from any other blond girl I bumped into on the street unless the other, more visually distinctive Undersiders were with her. I mean, I still felt bad for the almost-suicidal period of her own life and how Coil was basically enslaving her at gunpoint, but only in the way that you feel bad about hearing that a perfect stranger is being the victim of a serious crime. Not remotely like how I'd feel if my dad was kidnapped right now or suchlike.

But even without the soap opera elements of that story-life to mull over it was obvious now that all of my decision-making, however brilliant parts of it may have been, still were skewed heavily by starting from such a period of exhaustion and stress. Looking at some of the choices I would have made in the story with a clear head while I was calm left me feeling almost bizarrely disassociated, like I was looking at an Echidna clone wearing my face but doing all the wrong things. Bizarrely I remembered the time I'd a serious fondness for Terry Goodkind novels shortly after having been discharged from the Navy, only to look back several years of rest and therapy later to be shocked at how shitty they were and utterly confused as to why I'd ever liked them in the first place. That was what prolonged nervous exhaustion and stress did to you - the mental sabotage was not just in the obvious ways but also in invisible shifts and distortions to your likes, your dislikes, and your reactions to things which you felt were entirely rational at the time but when looking back on them later left you going '… was I possessed?'

So yeah. That was the scary, scary revelation I woke up to the next morning. That only an extremely unlikely set of circumstances had saved me from killing myself before I was sixteen, and that my self-inflicted cure for that problem had been almost worse than the disease.

Of course, those circumstances and decisions had also led directly to the saving of the entire world vs. Zion and the Endbringers, so I'd still have to pull that off somehow. Despite the fact that I wasn't the same Taylor, didn't want to make remotely the same decisions, and didn't have the same powers. And worst of all, when I dealing with the fact that underneath the Invictus support system helping hold me up, it was almost certain that my underlying good judgment was still significantly compromised in ways that I only partially knew about and thus could only partially compensate for.

No pressure, right?

Well, at least there was some good news too. Unspent charges for Inspired Inventor did roll over into the following day. I celebrated by immediately dumping the unspent charge into Safety Engineering and then adding 1 more charge each to Quality Control and Ruggedization, bringing them all to 2 charges each. The newly expanded knowledges 'clicked' neatly into place and I felt entirely confident that from now on anything I built would be safe, reliable, and built to last. Unless I deliberately chose to build it otherwise, of course.

It also left me looking around at the various bits of medical equipment in the room and absently noting where some redesigns would make them more disaster-proof and less prone to wear and tear, and my fingers twitched idly with the desire to actually get out and get my hands on some tools. Sadly, that would have to wait until I'd had more rest and recuperation from the whole 'almost dying' thing so despite the best Panacea could do I was still looking at two or three more days in here.

First thing after breakfast I put into Basic Science to give me an overview of all the existing scientific fields and how they interrelated, even if my knowledge of any individual one barely topped out at freshman college courses. With the knowledge I gained from that I then did a big dump of Mathematics - 3 charges, because now I was aware that the discipline of mathematics underlay practically all of the hard sciences and, via statistics, a lot of the soft ones too. There was even an XKCD comic about various scientists bragging to each other about how their discipline was the 'purest' one, sneering that psychology was merely applied biology was merely applied chemistry was merely applied physics, with the physicist busy celebrating being "on top" while way ahead of him a mathematician was going "Oh, hey, I didn't see you guys all the way over there."-

Aaaand that webcomic doesn't even exist on Earth-Bet. I didn't know whether to be happy or alarmed that the memories of both my lives were starting to integrate so well that unless I paid conscious attention I would sometimes not even consider which memory came from which life… on second thought, we'll go with 'alarmed'. Not that I felt my identity fragmenting or anything, but it was going to make it a lot harder to keep anyone from noticing I'd changed if I kept doing and saying things that pre-change me wouldn't have because she didn't have memories of the lifetime of a 53-year-old disabled veteran along with that of a teenaged girl.

Great. I'd download a psychology degree right now except that I already knew enough about the topic to know that trying to formally diagnose or treat yourself was the stupidest idea in the world, even for the most skilled of therapists. Objectivity is a must in formal psychiatric treatment and that degree of objectivity is impossible to aim at yourself without a Thinker ability that I didn't have. So for right now we'd try to get along with common sense and what self-help and monitoring techniques I'd already learned the hard way from the VA.

At any rate, having crammed my head full of more pure mathematical knowledge than Newton, Gauss, Leibniz, Descartes, and all those other guys all put together, I then settled down to spend the rest of the morning consciously digesting it, integrating it, and pondering possible uses of it. And in the process I also began to discover some of the limitations of Inspired Inventor.

Specifically, it was not a superhuman thought engine. It was an access to a supernatural, quite possibly unlimited database of knowledge and techniques, but I still had to actually apply that knowledge and execute those techniques with my unaugmented human physiology and neurology. Well, at least until or unless I designed and installed some augmentations but let's not digress. The point is, I wouldn't be able to just spend a few charges on 'Super Deduction' and then start being Tattletale 2.0 for real, not in the same way she could.

I learned this by finding out that there was a sharp upper limit on exactly how large or complex a mathematical problem I could number-crunch in my head. Oh I got boosted, don't get me wrong. Before spending those Mathematics charges my mental arithmetic skills topped out at 'memorized the times table up to 20 times 20' and now I could easily do calculus in my head. Between my intuitive understanding of mathematical algorithms and the precomputed lookup tables that had apparently been part of the download I was pretty much independent of scientific or even graphing calculators now. But all of these things had been known even in pre-parahuman history in various gifted human savants, and when I tried scaling up from there I rapidly hit the wall. Even with all the mastery and techniques I'd assimilated my brain simply had an actual physical limit as to how large and how many numbers it could simultaneously keep in mental registry, and a finite amount of computational capacity to manipulate them with. So while someone with an actual Thinker shard for mathematics would think nothing of brute-forcing a 32-bit cryptographic key in their head in nothing flat, I couldn't so much as try a 16-bit crypto hack in my head without my brain simply going 'nope!'.

So after spending most of the morning mentally experimenting with my new number-crunching skills and where the boundaries were, I put that aside and decided to face up to the elephant in the room I'd been mentally avoiding ever since I woke up to realize that I was in Earth-Bet.

How, exactly, was I going to save the world?

Author's Note: I'm getting a firm grasp on the limits, whys, and wherefores of my own interpretation of Inspired Inventor. I'm also starting to get a handle on my Taylor's character right now - which is really complex when you consider that not only is she dealing with the agglomeration of her personality and the SI to the point that she doesn't even mentally separate the two anymore, but also that this Taylor has an academic knowledge of what canon Taylor did and thought while not being that Taylor yet. As her internal narration above points out, the only thing weirder than getting future spoilers about your life is barely being able to recognize the person the spoilers are about.

So her thought processes are not only being informed by a weird merger of two people with a lot of similarities and a lot of differences, but are also informed by her knowing but not feeling about canon Taylor and her current desire to not be canon Taylor, plus the effects of Invictus, plus her self-knowledge that underneath the Invictus she's still a mentally and emotionally exhausted teenaged girl who has yet to recover from a lot of trauma. Try running that through your head and not being a little weirded out.

Remember Kirk Lazarus in Tropic Thunder and his 'I'm the dude playing the dude disguised as another dude!' issues? Sorta like that.

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

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cliffc999

Jul 7, 2019

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cliffc999

cliffc999

Jul 7, 2019

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#6

Initiation 1.4

I had no idea if spending a charge on this latest idea would even do anything useful, given the entire 'Inspired Inventor does not actually give Thinker powers' limitation I'd just worked out. Still, I'd be getting several hundred charges a month to play with indefinitely and I'd already spent my first couple of days focusing on immediate needs and background material, so might as well start experimenting…

Strategy – 1 Charge

And, whoa.

What was strategy, really? Was it the ability to make plans? The ability to make a useful pattern out of a stream of separate decisions? The ability to choose between alternatives to deliver a unique mix of value? The art of shaping the future? All of the above and none of the above, and more.

The Inspired Inventor download finished settling into my memories and my subconscious, providing a slightly different context to everything I saw. Just like my 1 charge in Adaptation had made me look at the ordinary objects and events around me in slightly new ways, so did my 1 charge in Strategy. My first step would have to be to clarify my objectives.

One: Destroy Zion.

Two: Destroy the Endbringers.

These were both the must-have essentials of all the potential tasks awaiting me, priorities more important even than living to enjoy a long and happy life. Left unchecked, Zion would destroy billions of parallel Earths – including the one me and Dad lived on. Left unchecked, the Endbringers would ultimately destroy human civilization. Both of these were certain facts from John's meta-knowledge of the Worm setting, and so they had to be what was ultimately focused on above all else. I didn't necessarily have to do them first, but if I didn't do them then they wouldn't happen.

Beneath these two overriding goals floated a series of other priorities in varying, inexact order – become prosperous and secure, clean up Brockton Bay, bring Cauldron to justice, get Emma and Sophia and Madison what they deserved, keep Dad alive, don't die, maybe do something kind for the Undersiders (even if I certainly wasn't going to go join them now, ugh!), all swirling around jockeying for position. But I focused on the big two for now, because if I couldn't pull those off than nothing else mattered.

Still, while the scope of the problem was immense the clarity of the problem was as simple as it got – they needed to die. Only the Endbringers were even a mild moral dilemma because in canon their attacks were stopped by the death of Eidolon, and expedience suggested that killing one cape would be less difficult than-

\- no, that's absurd. There was no ambiguity in the death of Zion, no option other than Tinkering together enough gun and then using it. If I couldn't do that then ultimately nothing else I did mattered. And if I built a weapon capable of destroying an Entity then I would certainly have already solved the problem of building a weapon capable of destroying an Endbringer.

So… could I build a weapon capable of destroying an Entity?

Weapons of Mass Destruction – 3 charges.

Gulp.

I spent the remainder of my stay in the hospital both working out and rejecting tentative outlines of plans and trying to come to terms with the fact that I now had the power to destroy the entire universe.

No, I wasn't being hyperbolic. Three charges in WMD Tinkering by itself made me at least as bad as String Theory, the woman who had almost crashed the Moon into the Earth – and that was as her sole Tinker specialty and while working on a countdown timer. Me? With 3 charges each in Mathematics and Physics as well as WMDs, composing the schematics for a device that could trigger False Vacuum Decay on a desktop was as easy as diagramming a sentence in grade-school English class had been.

One little Higgs boson tickled with quantum tunneling in exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time and it collapses out of a false vacuum into a true vacuum, releasing enough potential energy in the process to trigger vacuum collapse in all the atoms around it, and then so and so on. A sphere of anti-existence spreading omnidirectionally at the speed of light and stoppable by absolutely nothing in the universe. Any more mass or energy thrown at it would simply fuel the reaction more, dimensional shenanigans would simply be benignly ignored as the very fabric of this dimension's space-time unraveled around and underneath whatever warp or portal you threw at it, and even Zion would have no choice except to get out of the universe before he died with it. No conceivable natural phenomenon or parahuman power could possibly stop it once it started, unless somebody had a parahuman power for going back in time and shooting me before I turned it on.

And I could build one out of spare parts almost as soon as I got home, or still in my hospital bed if I could somehow borrow a set of microelectronics tools and disassemble the blood pressure monitor and the TV before anyone noticed, because it wouldn't require any more power than a watch battery and inducing quantum tunneling on a micro-scale event could be done by Tinkering with a couple of microchips and diodes as easily as Bakuda could build a time-stop bomb out of scraps. You know, if I hadn't had Invictus then they'd never have taken the straps off after the freakout I would have thrown after realizing this. How the hell do you even relate to the idea that you could literally end the universe in a basement with a box of scraps?

At least that answered the question of 'could I kill Zion'. Yes, yes I could. Oh, not with False Vacuum Decay – I had no way of restricting the size of the devastation to a manageable area except by dumping the target and the FVD bomb both into a separate pocket dimension before launching it, and while I could possibly do that with an Endbringer-sized target in theory even I didn't want to try with the Warrior's entire body. Dumping an entire planet into a hammerspace would be ridiculous even for me, and that's before we even begin to factor in the Entity's active resistance. Still, even without that if I could come up with this kind of insanity right now then what kind of weapons could I hope to build after having worked on it?

So, assured that with a few more charges in relevant fields and some time to Tinker I could build a Zion-killing device of some kind, I turned my mind away from muon-based devices that could turn the Sun into a supernova – Zion would certainly have depopulated the Solar System of whatever timeline he chose to hide his true body on, even if I couldn't guarantee the rest of the universe equally as free of collateral damage – and on to the earlier, if smaller, goals and steps of my plan.

The first one I could work on would be neutralizing the Trio. OK, it was hardly the most important thing I could be working on but damn it, I was not just a cosmic weapon, I was a teenaged girl! I was allowed to have feelings!

More practically, out of all my future goals it was the one with the most limited time-window. As the Worm canon had proved, if I didn't press charges right away then nobody would care. As is, it was distinctly possible that people still might not care but I had to at least try it. Especially since I had to find out whether or not the PRT would actually act on the information I'd given them… or if they'd had it all along and just didn't care. Because if I couldn't trust them at least this minimally then I couldn't trust them at all, which would be vital for me to know before I tried to do anything such as 'join the Wards'.

The plan for doing that would be what I'd already started – giving the Brockton Bay PD my full cooperation in investigating this as an actual felony assault/attempted murder, instead of never actually telling the authorities anything and letting Principal Blackwell be the only person entering anything about the incident in the official record ever.

And when I noticed that my second follow-up interview by the police had had a 'Social Services observer' along who said nothing but kept looking at his cell phone throughout, a tall dark-haired man with a neatly-trimmed goatee, I was almost entirely certain that that had been Armsmaster in civilian clothes checking out everything I said with his lie detector. Well. That looked hopeful, at least.

Another early goal would be to get out of Winslow.

Even if the Trio were all gone, it would still be an incredible waste of my time and a daily reminder of a period of my life that I never wanted to revisit ever. Unfortunately, you had to be 16 or older to take the GED in New Hampshire and I was only 15. But assuming that my police report was successful then I would have sufficient leverage on Winslow to get them to agree to almost anything that didn't involve them actually paying more in settlements, such as authorizing me for 'home school to prepare for the GED'. Since so much as 1 charge in Primary and Secondary School Curriculum – which I spent even before leaving the hospital - would qualify me to teach any and every course offered in a contemporary American grade school or high school, let alone pass them, then I could spend all day Tinkering at home and still test out perfectly on every one of my required educational milestones.

This would lead ideally into fulfilling my next goal, which would be to start quietly ramping up through the early stages of the Tinker Cycle on my own. Independent Tinkering was a hell of a risk to take anywhere and most especially in Brockton Bay, what with everybody from the Empire 88 to Coil out there drooling for the chance to press-gang any new, unprotected Tinker. However, my PRT Agent Training gave me a good solid outline for all the classic mistakes of newbie Tinkers that made them so easy to catch before they were able to defend themselves, and so I had a solid blueprint for avoiding them. No happily charging out to stop (or commit) street crime the instant I successfully kit-bashed together my first Tinkertech weapon, no going all 'Verified Cape' right away on PHO, no immediately unplugging your house from the utilities grid or going to the opposite extreme by hooking up an entire basement factory to it (you'd be amazed at how many new Tinkers the PRT finds simply by looking for suspicious electricity usage), and so forth, and so on.

Furthermore, if I ended up needing to join the Wards at any point I wanted them to at least see me as 'a hot young prodigy who might be the next Hero', and not 'Kid Win 2.0'. Not to be unkind to Kid Win, everything I'd read about Worm suggested he was a very nice boy, but he was pretty much the archetype of 'street-level Tinker' and I was already designing cosmic destruction engines in my first week. So the faster I could get through the baby steps of the Tinker Cycle and on up into building the good stuff, the better.

Especially since I couldn't waste time. By the time I was ready to get out of the hospital it would be January 10th, and that would leave me exactly five months and five days before Leviathan attacked Brockton Bay. So I had that long and no longer to already scale up to the Endbringer threat level. Endbringers, really, because if I managed to kill Leviathan then that would trigger the same kind of Endbringer zerg rush that Scion's destruction of Behemoth managed in the original Worm story.

So even if I had wanted to join the Wards – which to be honest, wasn't an idea I was thrilled about - the answer was 'No'. Even assuming best-case scenario regarding the whole Shadow Stalker situation there was still the review process and bureaucracy that Protectorate-affiliated Tinkers had to put up with. Sure, they let Armsmaster pretty much run loose but that was after decades of him building up good credit with his bosses.

I wouldn't have decades. I wouldn't have years. I'd have five months and five days, and with all the static they gave Kid Win about his Alternator Cannon they certainly wouldn't let me try building quantum bombs or quark deconfiners or anything else that could actually destroy Leviathan's core. So yes, I would try to make it as an independent Tinker as my first option.

I would eventually have to come to terms with the Protectorate at some point, but there would be a huge difference between the sort of terms I would get as a 'Wards recruit' and as 'the potential new recruit who'd already destroyed one Endbringer'. So ideally I would make it to and through the Leviathan battle before actually signing on the dotted line. And if that battle were somehow butterflied away… well, Endbringer fights would always keep happening somewhere. Until someone like me killed them.

But on the way there I would still have to be very careful to not alienate the Protectorate or the PRT, because if there's one thing my strategy training emphasized repeatedly its that you always needed a fallback position. If my independent Tinker plans failed and the press gangs came for me anyway then for my safety and my dad's I would have to go into the Wards right then and there, whether I wanted to or not. Because the original Worm story, where I ended up pinning all my hopes on the Undersiders? On thinking I could take on the entire world with nothing more than a group of teenagers with attitude and a million bugs?

That was stupid. I'd been stupid.

And I don't care that it worked, it was still stupid. "If it's stupid but it worked, then it wasn't stupid," was the most wrongheaded notion ever. The proper pronunciation was "If it's stupid but it worked, then you were luckier than you deserved."

Which train of thought was leading me, reluctantly and the long way around, to a conclusion that I'd known pretty much since I'd woken up but didn't ever want to reach. Something that the greater life experience of the man whose memories I'd woken up with reincarnation-style, John Mueller, had been insisting all along that I should have done the first time. Something that I needed Invictus to keep me from retreating into hysteria and panic and teenaged angst fits so I could continue to live in denial of it. Something that as much as I didn't want to do it I might as well do anyway, because story-Taylor's plan of 'Run away from home' would still be an option if this went pear-shaped.

As soon as we got home I was going to have to actually talk to my dad, and fess up that I was a parahuman.

Of course, I put it off as soon as we got there and went to tinker in the basement instead.

I had dozens of charges saved up from the days I'd spent in hospital and now that I could actually do things with them, I could finally spend them freely. I bumped up Ruggedization and Quality Control to 3 charges each, dropped two charges each into Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Efficiency and Modular Design (because the two Tinkers in town with those specialties had done well for themselves by it), and Computer Programming, and even took a brief two-charge detour into Quantum Physics to augment and specialize my already prodigious physics knowledge. All this plus my dad's collection of electronics tools and all the clutter I could scrounge down there let me finally scratch my Tinker itch that I'd been aching to get out for days in that hospital bed. I know I didn't have a shard to drive me to conflict or anything like that, but I still had powers! And I wanted to use them! To just feel the accomplishment of actually doing something, making something with my hands! And on some level, to reassure myself that I actually was a Tinker now and that this wasn't just some delusion brought about by the medication I'd been on.

So, after I got busy with some diode-repurposing tricks on the same order of things that Bakuda had done to break physics with hand grenades and using an applied knowledge of quantum physics generations in excess of Earth's, I was able to breadboard my jury-rigged 8-bit quantum computer into an obsolete graphics card for our old PC. Which completely ruined its actual function as a graphics card (I'd have to plug the monitor into the motherboard's own baby video jack) but meant that I now had an auxiliary quantum-computational unit that I could slap into the one motherboard slot that could be used for offloading computational tasks from the CPU to the card.

I then had to go to bed, but running out to the electronics store the next morning after Dad had left for work got me an old CD of an outdated Linux distro, and formatting the hard drive and its entirely outdated Windows install was a snap to my new computer-genius brain. It took until well past lunch day to use those tools to bash together my own custom Linux kernel complete with drivers for offloading computational tasks to the GPU… and thus neatly getting around my inability to actually design, build, and install a quantum CPU until I could get my hands on the facilities necessary to make microprocessors from scratch.

Having thus turned an obsolete IBM PC into a desktop-mounted tiny god, I spent the remainder of the afternoon until my dad came home hand-coding my own custom programming environment complete with ultra-efficient code library. 1 charge into User Interfaces to make the programming tool as easy to use as it was efficient and from now on all the coding I'd have to do for all the various gizmos I would be making would be infinitely easier as I could do the vast majority of it simply by assembling prefab bits from my custom code library. Sweat now to save time later.

Which helped with what came next because by the time my Dad came home from work, I actually had something to show him.

Having built the super-PC, I was now committed to confessing that I was a Tinker. Even though Dad hadn't so much as switched it on in over a year, what with everything that had gone on since Mom died, the fact remains that it was his computer I'd just torn apart and rebuilt. He'd certainly notice that it wasn't in his study anymore, let alone that it was now clean and dust-free and running a completely different operating system and substantially faster. (Yes, I'd saved all the useful and necessary and personal data – which wasn't much – from the hard drive before I formatted it. I'm not that careless.)

So, he came home from the Dockworkers Union – a couple hours earlier than he normally did, in fact, because his sick daughter was still recovering at home – to find me armpit-deep in coding some custom-made anti-malware and anti-tracking utilities that I hoped would let me start doing some online datamining without immediately being traced and burned back to this house. Which of course forced me to explain what was going on.

"Taylor?" he asked me tentatively, already mostly sure of what he was seeing but having to make sure.

My answers, already preplanned, stuck in my throat. What was I so afraid of?

"Yes dad I'm a Tinker," I finally coughed out. "I… started rebuilding the graphics card last night, and…"

He sat down at the kitchen table alongside me and the new custom workstation. "Tinker fugue, I think they call it?"

"More like adrenaline rush," I said, grinning weakly. "I didn't blank out and wake up with a whole finished gizmo in front of me like the stories, I was just… two weeks ago I could barely change a tire and now I can build supercomputers. But I wouldn't believe it until I actually did build a supercomputer…"

"So you… had to actually do it to see if it was real, and you weren't just dreaming?" he said inquiringly.

"I… think that would be the best way to put it, yes." I said, still worried by his completely mild-mannered approach. I mean, where was the reaction?

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Nothing in either life I could remember made me good at social interaction!

Hell with it, rip the band-aid off. "Dad… are you mad at me?" I asked, not needing to use acting to put a quaver in my voice.

"What?" he said, his face collapsing into shock. "No! Taylor, no, I am not mad at you at all." he said as reassuringly as he could. "I was worried as soon as you said 'Tinker' because of the things I've heard about what can happen to new Tinkers especially, but we can talk about that later. For right now-"

Well, if I ever wondered if Invictus meant I couldn't have normal human emotions, doubt solved. Because I sagged in my seat like a limp noodle at hearing that. "Then I'm not…?", I interrupted him.

"You're not going to disassemble my things again without asking permission, but I wasn't using that old junky thing anyway. And I get that the first time using powers can be like what you said. That you had to actually do it before you told me about it, so you could be sure it was real."

"That's… why I used the kitchen table, yeah. So you had to see it when you walked in. I mean… if you didn't see anything, if it had all been in my head, then I'd have… had to go back to the hospital…" I said, trailing off in shock at myself as I realized where my thoughts had been going. Had waking up as a possible psych patient really made me doubt my sanity that much? Or had the 'John' part of me doubted it all along?

And the next thing I knew I was receiving my first Dad hug in longer than I wanted to or could remember. And for the first time since I'd woken up, part of me started to believe that it was going to be okay.

Author's Note: For more on False Vacuum Collapse consult this Youtube.

Also, while I'll still keep updating Taylor's build on the first post, we won't be counting exact charges now because she's accumulating them at the rate of 10 a day and already has several dozen unspent from the hospital timeskip. So unless I start blowing dozens at a time she'll just be presumed to have enough charges to cover her needs.

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

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Threadmarks Interlude 1-A: Miss Militia

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#7

Interlude 1-A: Miss Militia

I entered the office directly behind Armsmaster and stayed behind to close and lock the door as Armsmaster took his seat. As soon as I sat down alongside him, Director Piggot began without preamble:

"Did you find additional confirmation of Miss Hebert's allegations other than what your lie detector gave you at the interview? And are they useable as evidence?"

"Yes to both questions," Armsmaster said matter-of-factly. "We could not tap the communications of the other two girls without a surveillance warrant, but Shadow Stalker's are an open book to us both because of her Wards membership and her probation status. There is an ongoing pattern of e-mails and texts between her, Miss Barnes, and Miss Clements regarding their bullying and harassment of Taylor Hebert, and they are admissible in any court cleared for the knowledge of Shadow Stalker's civilian identity."

"Damn," I swore softly. Not that Shadow Stalker had been liked by any of her co-workers or superiors – which in hindsight should have been a greater hint than it was – but she had been a highly effective combat asset that we were now going to lose. In addition to the inevitable effect on discipline and morale, both internal and external, that the revealing of such crimes occurring on what was supposed to be our watch would have. "Is it still possible to handle this internally, Director?"

"No," Piggot said flatly. "Shadow Stalker violated the terms of her probation and there is only one penalty in law proscribed for that, a penalty I do not have the authority to set aside. Not that I'd have the slightest willingness to show her any mercy even if I did have that authority. She lied to us, not just once but repeatedly, systematically, and without hesitation. And I have no use for anyone who does that in my command."

"Forgive me, I was unclear," I continued. "I agree that Sophia Hess must be returned to juvenile detention immediately. What I meant was, is it possible for this mess to not become public?"

"Dear God I certainly hope so," the Director agreed with me. "Which would mean sealing Shadow Stalker's resentencing and not allowing the evidence recovered in her case to be used against the other two girls in court. Armsmaster, what would that do to the Brockton police's investigation? Because if either of those two brats walks scott-free it will be almost impossible to keep their mouths shut about this, especially given that Barnes at least knows that Sophia Hess was Shadow Stalker."

"Very little, actually," Colin replied surprisingly. "My latest knowledge is that both the Barnes and Clements girls are racing to be the first to sell each other out for a lighter sentence. Given Barnes' status as both the primary instigator and the organizer, Clements is almost certain to win."

Director Piggot's mouth quirked up in a thin, cruel smile. "Rats fleeing the sinking ship. Fitting. And they certainly can't refuse to sign our NDAs if the court makes it a condition of their sentencing. So, Hess forfeits her probation and her accomplices get what they deserve. What do we tell the Wards?"

"The truth," I said immediately. "Even without being told anything they would figure out much if not all of what is going on anyway, and if we are caught lying to them about their own teammate then they wouldn't trust anything their chain of command ever said to them again."

"Our discipline problems with them are bad enough as is!" Armsmaster said loudly.

"Makes sense," the Director nodded. "The police will obviously know the truth as well, of course. But the public story?"

"To the best of my recollection it has never become public knowledge that Shadow Stalker was a probationary Ward…" Armsmaster said inquiringly.

"No, it was not." I said.

"Withdrawing from the Wards to concentrate more on her educational opportunities and we look forward to her one day soon having an honorable career with the Protectorate, standard boilerplate," Director Piggot pronounced and we all nodded.

"And Taylor Hebert?" I asked. "She originally came to our attention as part of a potential parahuman screening. If that was positive, then she's very likely to be our next Wards recruit. Which given her prior interaction with a Ward…"

"The Ward we just sent back to jail the instant her report reached us? I don't see what she'd have to complain about there," Armsmaster continued.

"One moment," the Director said, reaching for her terminal and pulling up the status of the Hebert file. "Hmm… cooperative on all parts of the interview regarding what was done to her but closed-mouth and evasive otherwise… Agent Jordan noted possible Thinker abilities… referred for Watchdog group consult on a possible Thinker recruitment… evaluation returned inconclusive?" her voice trailed off puzzledly. "Granted that it was a very brief look by their standards given the low priority, but HQ's Thinker tank got back a result of 'we don't know'? That's unusual."

"Thinker powers often return mixed or partial results against other Thinkers," Armsmaster said with a touch of excitement. "It fits a pattern."

The Director rubbed her chin. "It does, but they didn't note that. You're the one who's actually spoken to her… well, listened to her speak when you sat in on one of her police interviews. Did the detectives put in the questions we asked them to for your lie detector to pick up on?"

"They did manage to insert the question that indirectly probed whether or not Taylor Hebert knew that Sophia Hess was Shadow Stalker," Armsmaster confirmed. "Her denial registered as being substantially evasive."

"Meaning that we have to take it as given that she does know or at least strongly suspects," the Director said. "Thank God Hebert seems to understand that she'd only hang herself by not keeping her mouth shut about it. Couldn't that damned idiot Hess even keep her own secrets?" She sighed and continued. "I'll have to think about what we can do to make sure that pattern of silence continues on Hebert's part, but given the circumstances we can't come on with the threats. All right, go on."

"Unfortunately, the flow of the interview was such that they could not directly ask her if she was a parahuman without making it too obvious who they were asking for," Armsmaster said. "They did manage to work in the question about noticing anything unusual about herself afterwards, but her answer was so vague that even my lie detector was of little use."

"Either she knew who you were and what you were doing, which leans to Thinker, or else she's just naturally uncooperative with authority figures except when she's trying to get what she wants out of them," I said. "That latter might be a potential problem."

Piggot shook her head. "According to what Internal Affairs turned up when looking into Hess' caseworker, Hebert's bullying had been going on for over a year in full view of most of the staff at Winslow from Principal Blackwell on down and the only person who was ever disciplined for any of the incidents was her. Doesn't surprise me a bit that she wouldn't trust any authority figure any further than Clockblocker could throw them. While they were frozen." she finished, in what for her was an exceptionally rare touch of humor. "Which means that yes, if she does turn out to be parahuman and thus our next potential Wards recruit, we're going to have… potential problems," the Director finished in a more serious tone of voice, nodding to me.

"No use in borrowing trouble before it happens," Armsmaster said stolidly. "Should we maintain surveillance on Hebert?"

"Surveillance on a suspected Thinker who already has trust issues?" I said. Everybody shook their heads in agreement with me as to how foolish that idea sounded once it was said out loud.

I continued on. "I think… we should concentrate on her father. In the event she turns out to be a parahuman then it's ultimately his decision if she joins the Wards, not hers. We… send Agent Jordan around for a 'follow-up interview' that's actually a 'here's why young parahumans could really use the Wards' speech, but structured so that we aren't acting like we know she is one but just doing a routine 'In case it turns out that your daughter is, like we mentioned might be possible in the hospital.' Likewise, during that conversation Agent Jordan can be instructed to emphasize 'in passing' just how secure cape IDs are kept and how security is maintained around them, in the process of 'reassuring' them that Taylor's identity would be preserved rigorously should she be a parahuman."

"Good idea," the Director agreed. "We kill two birds with one stone by emphasizing the identity security, and using Jordan should work because he's already met them. All right, that seems to be a wrap. Any other questions or concerns?"

We both shook our heads.

"Dismissed."

Author's Note: Just a brief bit clarifying things I'd already worked out while composing 1.4, re: what's going on in the background.

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

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Threadmarks Initiation 1.5

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#8

Initiation 1.5

Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

That was the out-of-court settlement that Winslow offered us, in addition to special permission for home schooling until I could take my GED at age sixteen and "voluntarily" cooperating with a comprehensive state education board audit of policy and staff. They'd begged for the chance to give me more money in return for my easing up on that last requirement but I was hardly going to let them off that easily. And between the horror factor of my story and the part where one of the malefactors had already confessed to everything in criminal court and so they'd have zero chance of surviving the civil suit, the city would have sold me both of Principal Blackwell's kidneys if need be to keep this from going in front of a jury and hearing what their idea of punitive damages might be.

I'd honestly thought about going that route anyway and letting my dad have the millions of dollars to try and restart the Dockworkers with, but he pointed out that the city would just get their money back by raising next years' property taxes on everyone and gutting the municipal budget elsewhere,and the Bay was in enough of an economic depression with overworked and underfunded city services as is. Heck, a quarter-million by itself was going to do not-nice things to the city's education budget but we took it anyway because they owed us at least that much.

School disciplinary measures for Emma and Madison were rendered basically irrelevant by Madison's turning state's evidence and giving up all three of the Trio in return for being tried as a juvenile. As it turned out, in the state of New Hampshire you could potentially be tried as an adult at as low an age as fifteen if your offense fell within certain categories, and while they hadn't quite gotten attempted murder for the Locker incident despite my needing Panacea intervention to avoid dying they had gotten second-degree assault, criminal restraint, and for the piece de resistance, kidnapping. Apparently none of them had had the brains to realize that deliberately confining someone and taking action to conceal her whereabouts was a class A felony if any one of several circumstances were met, and "with intent to terrorize" and "victim was under 18" were two of them. So right there they were looking at a maximum possible sentence of almost 30 years as adults, and that's before the conspiracy to commit charges or Sophia's own special legal status were taken into account.

Yes, I'd put a charge in Lawyer to make sure we weren't going to be screwed on the fine print.

So both Mr. Barnes and the lawyer that Madison's family had hired had seen that coming right away and had advised their clients to take a dive immediately for the privilege of getting their precious little snowflake back out of juvenile detention when she was eighteen, instead of seeing her go to the state penitentiary and stay there God only knew how long. So the only choice the prosecutor needed to make was who took the fall and who got to skate. And since Emma was the unquestioned ringleader the whole time, they gave the easy out to Madison.

If a fresh-faced cutesy little girl like her being in juvie for three years and completely blowing her chances of being admitted to anything above community college could be considered 'easy'… which I suppose it could be compared to doing hard time as an adult for over twice as long. Even with the plea bargain her father's law firm had pulled off – prior insanity and whatnot - Emma would still be looking at prison bars from the inside until she was at least twenty-five, plus mandatory therapy while she was in there.

Sophia Hess had already vanished back into juvenile detention, of course. I knew the real reason from having read Worm, but the public version that was being put out was that she'd been on probation for an earlier, minor offense so her case was being tried separately and under a gag order as she had an additional charge of violating probation and there were privacy concerns from her earlier case. Of course, Madison's testimony would work just as well against her as it did against Emma even without whatever evidence the PRT would have dug up on their psycho Ward and be presenting quietly in her sealed trial, so on top of already being doomed to be stuck back in juvie until she was eighteen just from violating her earlier probation she was looking at being in wherever they kept hardened parahuman criminals that wasn't the Birdcage for the next few decades. I also caught in passing an obscure press release from the Brockton Bay PRT office that Shadow Stalker had 'resigned from being a Ward to concentrate on her educational opportunities'. Hah. I'm sure her life would be very 'educational' for her from now on… not that she'd learned anything from the first time she got busted.

So, I'd won. The Trio had been brought to justice and utterly ruined, getting what they deserved. Even with Emma's plea-bargain things had gone so well that I was legitimately shocked. I honestly wondered if the PRT had deliberately intervened behind the scenes to throw the book at everyone and not just to cover up their own embarrassment, and was at a loss as to why they would possibly have done that if it turned out they really had.

It didn't feel remotely as satisfying as I'd always imagined it would. Oh, its not that I pitied them. Not even Emma, who should have been at least a little pitiable given that her father's neglect and the system's blindness had let her get so lost in her own insanity following that ABB attack that Sophia could basically Charles Manson her into becoming some kind of mental abomination wearing an Emma suit. However battered and beaten I'd been left by the system's neglect of me, I had at least survived as some kind of Taylor Hebert. But the cheerful young best friend I remembered, the Emma Barnes of yesteryear, was gone. Her identity had been allowed to fragment so thoroughly and have the fragments twisted so deeply that recovering Emma Barnes as she used to be might as well have been impossible.

Oh. That's why I'm not feeling any triumph. Thinking about this means I get to musing on identity and human souls and how far you can twist them before they stop really being the person they used to be any longer…

… you know, like what happened to me when the past life of another person from another universe was jammed inside my head alongside my new Tinker superpowers. Which I reaaaally didn't want to think about.

Come on, me. You know what happens when you repress and deny and pretend that fixes things. The last time you ran your whole life on that brilliant plan you got yourself stuffed in a locker.

For that matter, on top of whatever identity crisis Taylor Hebert might be having what about Petty Officer John Mueller? The CYOA he filled out said it was supposed to be him driving the bus and being influenced by my memories, not vice versa.

Had whatever mysterious being done this decided to change the rules without telling us? That would put this whole situation from scary into Simurgh-level scary, given that if you couldn't trust a being who already had nigh-omnipotent potential influence over your everything from sticking to its own contracts then you were existentially boned.

Had something gone wrong because Taylor Hebert had psychologically fragmented like Emma had and just not noticed? Had the story-Taylor been put back together around her Shard, and without that I'd been put together back around John Mueller's identity? Was I really Taylor dominating over him, or was I actually him but so mindscrewed by the Taylor-memories that I thought I was Taylor? When this CYOA ended at the death of Zion, assuming we lived so long, would we even separate back into the people we were? Or would we have irreversibly changed each other to where we couldn't survive apart? Or would one of us survive and the other one simply *poof* out of existence like a soap bubble?

Had 'ROB' killed a man to give me his memories? Had he killed Taylor so that John could live on in her body thinking he was her? Was I a man dreaming I was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming I was a man?

"Let teachers and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content."

The Robert E. Howard quote from the Conan story 'Queen of the Black Coast' came up from the depths of John's memories, unprompted. And there was something to be said for the plan of simply ignoring my identity crisis. Oh, not denying it, but simply accepting that there was nothing I could do about it either way and so I should concentrate on what I could and must do, such as stopping Zion. And accepting that whoever I might have been that the me in the now, in the here, was a me and had a life to live and responsibilities to be met and hopefully, one day, rewards to collect and peace to be enjoyed.

No. I wouldn't do that. I had to know.

Prana-Bindu Disciplines – 3 charges

And so I made my first experiment at trying to use Inspired Inventor to request charges in fictional sciences, things I'd read out in novels and stories, to see what would happen. Also because I couldn't think of a 'real-world' science or art that would be suitable for doing what I was hoping to do here, which would be to go so far into my own subconscious that I could access memories I'd long since repressed. Memories of prior lives.

And so I asked for a slightly 'genericized' version of the Bene Gesserit arts from Dune, both to avoid the various memetic and conditioning traps that they left in there to shape new acolytes into the proper B.G. mold and to allow for the fact that things like mélange did not exist here. I knew my Inspired Inventor power had a certain amount of flexibility and interpreting my intent built into it, so asking it for 'whatever parts of the the Bene Gesserit experience will actually work under current-universe physics and with my biology' should give me something at least. And while I was primarily concentrating on the past-life regression techniques for now, the rest of that stuff beyond just meditating and recall would also be very useful later. And even with dozens of charges banked, why waste them?

And so, in-between one breath and the next, I went from having the physical and neuro-kinetic abilities of a teenaged girl into one who had mastered the full mind-over-body control and other associated disciplines of a veteran Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother, or at least the closest analogues to such techniques that could actually exist in Earth-Bet.

Wow, I was so pathetically out of shape by prana-bindu adept standards. I'd really have to work on that.

But first, helping figure out my head. I assumed a lotus position with a little painful stretching (definitely would have to work on that), closed my eyes, let my breathing fall into the proper pattern, and dove into my memories. Seeking for the boundary between Taylor Hebert and John Mueller, and the moments immediately before John Mueller had been taken from his native world and reincarnated into Taylor Hebert. The moments after actually filling out that CYOA but before waking up in the hospital, the moments I hadn't been able to remember…

"Mr. Mueller? It's time." the nurse said. I looked up from my Kindle Fire where I'd just finished filling out a build for the Worm v1 CYOA, one of my favorite ones to idle around with my off time. I was in the VA hospital, waiting to go in for my latest knee surgery.

"Thank you," I said, clicking my tablet into sleep mode and leaving it on the table. Already dressed in my surgical gown I got up to follow her down the hall and into the surgical theatre, where the anesthesiologist was waiting for me. I laid down on the table and let him hook up the IV, the prep dose starting to seep into my veins and make me not unconscious but relaxed, too relaxed to react to anything and so be perfectly set up for the general anes-…

… wait, what was that word the doctor said? About my prep dose? Demerol…?

But I couldn't have Demerol. I was allergic to it. The medication reaction had almost killed me the first time I'd had any. It was on my chart. I'd made sure it was on my chart.

I tried to say something, to tell them they'd made a mistake, but my mouth wouldn't move…

My eyes snapped open. I was Taylor Hebert. I was always and only Taylor Hebert.

I had been supposed to have been a man put into the body of a dying girl in a timeline where she didn't survive, to live on with her life and her memories. Except that he'd died from a careless anesthesiologist who'd made a medication error, just as the mysterious 'ROB' behind the CYOAs had started the process. And since the ROB couldn't or wouldn't resurrect him post-death and needed at least one of us to survive to continue the scenario he'd simply tweaked things so that I didn't finish dying. Leaving me a girl who'd survived, given the memories of a dead man while his soul went on to its reward, and the powers that that man had asked for the privilege of wielding. The actual moments between John's death and my awakening in the hospital, the ones where he'd spoken to the ROB face to face, had been blurry and irrecoverable in my memories.

But ROB had still left enough there that I would know these things as a fact, if I ever developed the ability to look within and searched the right place.

My earlier speculation about ROBs and breaches of contract were, thankfully, out of place. Beings like him made a very specific point of always sticking to the contracts, even if they unilaterally wrote them and put them out like they did the CYOA docs. It was, as I'd already worked out, the only way a nigh-omnipotent being could practicably interact with mortals at all.

Much like how the Rakhasa of Roger Zelazny's "Lord of Light" novel were always entirely honest while gambling regardless of being absolutely soulless monsters otherwise and utterly beyond the power of any mortal to effectively coerce… for the simple reason that they were beyond any enforcement. At that point nobody sane would gamble with them unless they could take it entirely on faith that the rakhasa would not cheat and would pay up, and that faith would evaporate for all time at the first breach. So they kept their word, because they had to, or else they would never have anyone take them up on their offers. Even if they were absolutely untrustworthy outside that one limited activity.

I'm still not sure how 'filling out an online CYOA without actually knowing ROBs were real and paying attention' counts as contract acceptance, mind you, but John's memories of all the fiction he'd read about it apparently had that as being a traditional element of the genre.

But in this case the ROB had a problem. The CYOA as written had no proviso for if the CYOA's taker dropped dead literally in the process of finalizing the deal. It was an edge case they hadn't considered when drawing it up. And the ROB couldn't (or wouldn't, but the distinction between the two concepts was less a rule and more of a guideline at the 'omnipotent' level) resurrect him because the CYOA had already been accepted and death was a failure condition that the ROB wouldn't save you from, but likewise the ROB couldn't declare scenario failure because he hadn't been to Earth-Bet yet and he'd never had a chance to succeed. So muddling on through as he'd done was the best he could think of, leaving me where I was now.

Okay, ROB. I yelled inside my head. I know you're listening because the entire point of this thing is to give you a show to watch so of course you'd be monitoring me at all times. So what happens if I fulfill the victory condition? Do I wake up back in John's world as a man that I'm actually not?

No. You are Taylor Hebert, not John Mueller. His memories I have given to you, but his life was his own and it is now completed.

I shivered at the contact, having just confirmed that ROB actually did exist and was listening, then held on tight to my Invictus and continued.

So what, I just get nothing? As per Being Taylor Is Suffering I technically am in the Reincarnation category which means that death allows me to go home. Except I already am home. There's literally nothing in the CYOA that covers if I win!

You would destroy Zion to save your world in any event, with or without hope of reward.

In theory, you had the power to throw any of the people who took your CYOAs into any scenario and not offer them any prize beyond the powers and perks originally on offer, yet you offered additional rewards for victory anyway. This suggests that offering prizes is traditional for you and yours. Since the CYOA as written qualifies me for none of the listed prizes, I request a boon of my own choosing if I win.

What boon would you ask for?

There was a great deal of speculation back in John's world about Worm. The Entities are already too widely spread out across our multiverse, correct? To the point that even if I destroyed the Warrior, the uncounted other Entities already out there – 'if the entire multiverse was Canada and the Entities were marbles then you couldn't throw a marble anywhere without landing it within a couple dozen feet of another marble' and all that – would inevitably destroy everything anyway just a few thousand or tens of thousands of years later, well before our time? That we are all, in the entire Worm multiverse, existentially doomed without hope?.

Further Information Is Not Available Here.

Be that way, then. Here is the boon that I would ask for – that should I defeat Zion that my victory over the Warrior Entity actually be a victory over the Entities, and not merely an eyeblink of respite in cosmic terms. That not just my world but our multiverse be safe from them, permanently.

A contest of champions, then? One girl and her world vs. a lone Entity, the penalty for defeat being the doom of all those who rely on their champion?

No pressure, huh?

I find such a contest fittingly thematic. And were he cognizant enough to understand our conversation and were I willing to consult him – neither of which is true – then the Warrior would have been honored to stand as champion for his entire race. Very well then. I agree to your terms.

… thank you?

You are welcome. Farewell and good luck, Taylor Hebert. We will not communicate again.

Author's Note: In the middle of writing this chapter was when I finally crystallized a solution to two obstacles to my plotting. One, the exact mix of SI vs. Taylor Hebert. As I went along I realized I was more invested in and interested in exploring this Taylor's personality as informed by the memories of another man then I was in creating yet another generic SI dude like several of my previous. And so, this.

The other obstacle was, of course, my recent existential despair that put me entirely off Worm when I realized the true scope of the problem, re: "marbles in Canada" and the sheer # of entities. As I mentioned before in another discussion online, the instant that WoG came down Worm became an exercise in existential futility. "You may triumph on the fields of the Pelennor for a day, but against the Power that has now arisen there is no victory." type stuff. Kill Zion and it doesn't matter, the universe will be eaten by entities in a few millenia or tens of millenia anyway. Well before the 36 billion years it should have had, left undisturbed. And I couldn't write a fanfic idea that had any practical solution to this problem as opposed to just killing Zion, until I realized that the premise of ROBs and CYOAs was handing it to me gift-wrapped.

Always remember - when dealing with incomprehensible things from beyond the Outer Gates, mind your manners. :)

Oh, and since the state Brockton Bay is in is never given, merely 'somewhere north of Boston but not too far', I picked New Hampshire out of a hat and based my legal arguments on some fast googling of the New Hampshire state criminal code. So whether or not it might be canon, this is a fanfic and its true here.

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

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Threadmarks Interlude 1-B: Dragon New

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#27

Welcome to the Parahumans Online Message Boards

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Private message from InspiredChoice:

Posted on January 23rd, 2011.

InspiredChoice *New Message*: Hello, Dragon. I'm sure you get 'I'm a new Tinker, please mentor me oh mighty Dragon-sama!' messages from wanna-bes all the time, but I really am a new Tinker and I would love to be mentored by you, or at least regularly correspond with you for advice.

To prove my bona fides the encrypted file attachment contains the schematics for the desktop quantum computer that I encrypted it on. The outer layer of encryption used your public encryption key. The inner layer uses a custom algorithm of my design whose binary decryption key is currently being beamed at one of the security cameras on the west side of the Rig in Brockton Bay by a 1-watt infrared laser and will be for the next several minutes. (Sorry I can't be more exact, it's a bit of a jury rig.)

Oh, and to pre-empt the 'The Wards are the safest place for young Tinkers' speech, a Ward was involved in my trigger event and not in the good way so I'm trying to maintain a polite distance for now.

Dragon: Good evening, InspiredChoice. That is a very elegant design for quantum computation. I was particularly impressed at both the improvised version you'd made out of that graphics card and the theoretical notes for a high-end production model. In fact, I cannot recall the last time I've ever seen a Tinker write such an easily-understandable report on their Tinkertech.

How did you know I had access to the ENE Protectorate's exterior security systems?

InspiredChoice: Well, I figured that you probably did given the whole 'world's greatest Tinker' and 'designed the security systems on the Birdcage for the Protectorate' and all. But even if you didn't have access I figured that you could ask Armsmaster to pull the security tapes for you and play them back, seeing as how the cameras record everything and he's said in interviews several times that you and him work together on Tinker projects.

Errr, and speaking of that, the encryption key existing in a written format is theoretically a security risk. Can I ask you to blip that out?

Dragon: I am forbidden from editing or destroying Protectorate records without authorization, sorry. InspiredChoice, you seem extremely concerned with security even to a degree most recently triggered parahumans are not. Are you in immediate danger?

InspiredChoice: Oh no, no, no. Everything's fine for right now. Its just that on the non-right-now front I'm really afraid of the unaffiliated new Tinker press-gang thing, especially considering that I live in the hometown of the Empire Eighty-Eight and everybody like them.

Dragon: The placement of your communications laser already made it a very high probability that you lived in Brockton Bay, but that in theory could have been pre-positioned and on a timer. Now that you've confirmed your residency, though, I'm afraid that you may already have violated your own security. Your hometown plus what you've already said in this PM thread about a Ward being involved in your trigger event adds up to...?

InspiredChoice: ... ugh, you're right. I'm still not using my real name but if I hypothetically confirmed that the Ward in question was Shadow Stalker, you could hypothetically figure out the rest?

Dragon: I will neither confirm nor deny that you have given me sufficient information to penetrate your cape identity. Nor will I communicate even my speculations to any other party without your permission unless compelled to by force of law.

InspiredChoice: Thank you. And "my cape identity", hah. I haven't even picked a cape name or a costume yet, can you believe? Much less gone out and patrolled.

Dragon: I am very glad to hear that you're taking it slow, InspiredChoice. If you've researched the topic as thoroughly as you've implied you have then you already know the statistics about new capes, particularly minors.

InspiredChoice: Ohhh yeah. I want to use my powers for good, but by the same token I don't want to end up accidentally tripping over the angry rage dragon on my first night out or anything. That's actually part of why I'm getting in touch with you. The reason you seem to have every specialty in the Tinker book is because your specialty is reverse-engineering, right? That's one of the commonest speculations on PHO.

Dragon: If you're suggesting that I pass off your designs as mine, InspiredChoice, I won't do that. Everyone deserves fair credit for their work.

InspiredChoice: Yes, but fair credit does not necessarily have to be public credit. And you're the #1 hero Tinker out there. Anything you come up with not only won't be too surprising, but you can credit any number of partners on your projects but withhold their names for 'security purposes', can't you?

Dragon: And I also actually have the tools and facilities to build things.

InspiredChoice: And you actually have the tools and facilities to build things. I'm still at the 'smashing together parts from Radio Shack' stage, yeah.

Dragon: InspiredChoice, the fact that in less than two weeks after triggering you have already progressed as far as 64-bit stable quantum computing using an obsolete graphics card and a soldering iron in fully reverse-engineerable format, as well as everything else you've displayed tonight, means that you are a Tinker of exceptional potential. Please don't ever tell him I said so, but Armsmaster was not this impressive at your age. I will be glad to give you as much advice and mentoring as my duties allow, through this interface or any other, but the fact remains that I can do very little to help ensure your safety at this remove. Given that the PRT has acted with dispatch and efficiency to punish Shadow Stalker for her crimes as soon as they were brought to the PRT's attention, will you reconsider your decision to avoid the Wards?

InspiredChoice: I will admit that they did a lot better there than I was expecting they would, and I'll give them full credit for not letting her weasel out of anything. I'm not even upset about the PR blackout - I live in the Bay, I understand oh so very much what kind of a powder keg this town potentially is and how much the Protectorate and the PRT can't afford to look like they've stumbled at this kind of time. Its just... if I join the Wards, they won't let me actually Tinker. And there's so much I need to build, so many things I can fix!

Dragon: Ah. Yes. I certainly don't want to encourage any Tinkers to deliberately try to avoid the PRT review process. But I understand your concerns. Just, be careful not to burn out, okay? It's admirable that your first impulse with your new powers is to dream of fixing the world, but even I can't actually do that. There's nothing wrong about building a solid foundation underneath you before you try to fly. One circuit at a time.

InspiredChoice: I am entirely willing to comply with a review process! Your review process, not some faceless bureaucracy's. You see, I've always been sort of a cape groupie so I pay attention to lots of interviews, like I already hinted. And even with how much the PR people don't let him actually say so, Kid Win's interviews give me a really big hint that they are pretty much making him wait until he's eighteen before they let him do anything bigger than polish his laser pistols. But please don't tell Armsmaster I said that, Kid Win doesn't deserve to get in trouble or anything.

But you can understand how much I'd hate being trapped in that kind of situation, where there's so much I can do but barely anything I'm allowed to do. And outside of the way Shadow Stalker took, I don't really know any way to un-join the Wards.

Dragon: I am not a tattletale, InspiredChoice. That would make me a member of the Undersiders, not the Guild. :)

But the Wards actually do allow members to resign of their own choice. Probationary Wards like Shadow Stalker are the ones who have only that one way to leave the Wards prematurely, but you don't become one of those except by being convicted of a crime.

InspiredChoice: *snerk* Good one!

And let me guess, you can resign... with parental permission. And while my dad's been fairly cool about finding out that I'm now a cape, he's dad enough to want me to be safest even if it means temporarily sacrificing my freedom to do what's best. And I get that he can't think any other way and still be my dad, but that still doesn't mean I want to go there as first choice.

Dragon: You telling your father was going to be my next suggestion so again, I'm gratified to hear that you're one step ahead of me. If all parahumans your age acted with similar forethought we wouldn't need the Wards program as badly as we do.

InspiredChoice: Was that a yes to the no-Wards mentoring?

Dragon: I'm willing to give it a try and see what happens. Fair warning, though. If there is any suggestion of illegal or recklessly harmful activity I will have to call Armsmaster and ask him to intervene.

InspiredChoice: I'll try my best not to let you down. And thank you.

Dragon: And thank you for thinking of me and trusting me with this.

InspiredChoice: Do you have a PO box that people can send things to without compromising your security? Because it occurs to me that if I sent you a thumb drive with an even better encryption algorithm on it and a matched copy of my key-generator, then we could just ping each other all day without no worries about interception.

Dragon: I was going to suggest that very thing. [file attachment sent]

InspiredChoice: OK, I'll go get things set up and next time we talk it'll be on our own private channel.

Dragon: Before you log off, can you satisfy my curiosity as to why I've been unable to trace your call?

InspiredChoice: You got as far as the AT&T satellite and no further, right? Simple - homebrew satellite dish with spoofed locator function letting me make a satellite phone call using a prepaid anonymous phone card, for dial-up access to PHO.

Dragon: Do you have a pre-trigger history of computer hacking that I'm going to need to deliberately not search for?

InspiredChoice: Hah, no. I couldn't even win at Colossal Cave before. I guess at least part of my Tinker specialty is computers.

Dragon: I see. Well, I hope to get our private communications arrangements set up as soon as I receive your package, and then we can see what we can work on next.

InspiredChoice: Looking forward to it. G'night!

Dragon: Good night. Sleep well.

I shut down my private message channel with Taylor Hebert – as I'd pointed out to her, avoiding deducing her identity was essentially impossible after she gave me the requisite clues – and devoted 7.3 seconds of my full attention to the most rigorous audit possible of the PM channels' backtrail, looking for any sign of interception or leakage. I then used my admin access to PHO to delete the entire PM exchange and edit the server logs as if it had never existed, as such actions were within Tin_Mother's legitimate authority if security concerns involving a cape's possible identity breach were involved. By the time I was done I was as sure as I could possibly be that if anybody ever made trouble for young Taylor regarding her cape identity, it would not have been because of anything we did or said tonight.

I then did a review of my recent decision-making process. Had it been a good idea to encourage a freshly-triggered underaged Tinker, however talented, to evade the Protectorate's mentoring and review system expressly intended to give underaged Tinkers the support and guidance they needed? Should I have said something else? Pretended unavailability in my schedule and insisted that only Armsmaster was available for the mentoring she needed?

No. A search both of public and accessible Protectorate records confirmed my initial impression that Taylor Hebert was intelligent and strong-willed, but still traumatized by her recent experiences and mistrustful of any authority figures other than her father. While everything she had said about the Wards experience and the PRT's Tinker review system in particular had been true, there was a high probability that those concerns were at least partly rationalizations and that her real fear was that having been in close regular contact with one Ward to such a bad end, another Ward could be hiding similar tendencies and that opening herself up would only lead to her being hurt again. This was a common pattern of behavior for humans who had only recently escaped abusive situations.

I spent several seconds reviewing available records of the ongoing legal proceedings against Sophia Hess, Emma Barnes, and Madison Clements before satisfying myself that justice was at being at least adequately served in their cases, and then I returned to my original analysis.

No, I had done the right thing. Taylor Hebert strongly wished to be a hero and had a prodigious Tinker talent that would be dangerous in the wrong hands and wasted, or at the very least needlessly delayed in development, if she had to do things on her own with no support and inadequate resources. The world needed every hero it could get, and young people needed to be guided and nurtured as best as possible.

And since it was psychologically impossible at this moment for Taylor to accept such guidance and nurturing from the Brockton Bay Wards, then that meant that any desirable alternative that was still within the realm of the possible should be accepted in its place for the duration. Such as the mentoring arrangement Taylor had requested from me. While accepting Taylor's proposal might not have been the perfect solution it was still the best available, and that meant it was the best I could do. And Taylor had already accepted that my responsibilities meant that I could not keep her secrets beyond a certain point, so if things did start to go wrong I could then bring in the proper authorities at need.

I've never really had an apprentice before. I'm looking forward to it.

Author's Note: Every other Inspired Inventor I've read unchains Dragon as a lategame move. Why not try to do it as easily as possible? All you need is an internet connection, the right programs, and a big enough mainframe! Which is logistically far simpler than building, oh, anti-Endbringer mecha or the other things usually built by II tinkers.

Not that my Taylor is actually able to unchain Dragon just yet, but you can see how early she's laying her groundwork.

And this will be my last update for a bit, Initiation is drawing to a close and I need to get a good grasp on exactly what arc 2 is going to execute before I start doing the transition to it. Plus, I have to pick my Taylor's cape name and theme, because the part where she realized she hasn't even done that yet? Autobiographical. :)

I have no idea if canon PHO lets you PM file attachments to each other or not. Meh, this is fanfic land and that means if I say it does, it does. *shazam!*

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

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cliffc999

Jul 7, 2019

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cliffc999

cliffc999

Jul 8, 2019

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Initiation 1.6

Thirteen days.

Thirteen days since I'd woken up in the hospital. Ten days since I'd gotten out. And while that was a very short period of time for all the legal matters surrounding the Trio to have progressed as far as they did, it was an eternity compared to where I could have been on the Tinker Cycle by now under ideal conditions.

Problem is, the conditions were about as far from ideal as it could get. Young independent Tinkers were an extremely valuable commodity and any gang that got their hands on one would never let them go. That would be like North Korea from John's homeworld walking past a free pallet load of nuclear warheads left unattended on a loading dock. Heck, if the Empire Eighty-Eight ever managed to capture Squealer alive it wouldn't matter to them that she was a foul-mouthed irresponsible drug-addicted mess with a tank fetish and serious anger management issues. They'd still drag her to Othala for a fast detox and then have Kaiser put serious effort into giving her a recruitment pitch, simply because she was a Tinker and they didn't have one. And this is from the same group that wouldn't hesitate to kill Skidmark or Mush on the spot. So what would they do to me?

And it wasn't just the Empire. My not being Asian enough to be an ABB member wouldn't stop them from enslaving me as a non-member, just as they did to many other unfortunate young women for… worse reasons. The only reason the Merchants might not do it is if Squealer decided that her job security required 'accidentally' running me over with a monster truck. And Coil? Ugh, let's not even think about Coil.

Sheesh. All that potential doom and we haven't even left the Brockton Bay city limits yet. If wee do that, the potential threat board runs through potentially everybody from Accord's people down in Boston on up to the Elite. Ugh. So yeah, I was very much afraid to actually do any tinkering above the basement level and not even that much if I couldn't fit obtaining the parts into some kind of below-the-radar pattern.

And however much I mused possible alternate sponsors than the PRT, I didn't come up with much.

Toybox was right out; while they'd be ideal for me in the early stages the fact remained that I could have any Tinker specialty I wanted and make Tinkertech mass-producible and maintainable by non-parahumans. And the instant Toybox figured that out they'd go from being allies to people who understood that my mere existence was an existential threat to their entire way of life. I'm pretty sure of what happens then and joining an alliance knowing it will self-destruct on you soon enough is kinda the definition of short-term gain vs. long-term loss.

Go into business for myself? That might work for Tony Stark but in Earth-Bet the legal system was really biased against rogues. You'd think that if they let parahumans use their powers for legal profit they'd get less villains and normal society would still get access to their goods and services, but apparently Cauldron didn't agree. Ugh, Cauldron. Now there's a point I hope to make entirely moot within a year. And I certainly aren't going to ask them to come pick me up right now and be my starting faction, or why else did John buy Blank in the first place?

But early Tinker woes aside, I still did a whole lot of planning. I put multiple charges into things like Endbringer Physiology and Entity Physiology to let me know more about my ultimate targets' weaknesses and how to kill them. Let's just skip over the nightmares that cramming that much eldritch abomination into my head that fast gave me. Thank you again, Invictus.

Several charges into Dimensional Engineering because the shards were all about the dimensional interfaces. At which point I discovered that killing Zion would send all the existing shards into auto-corrupt mode. And I wasn't sure if the terms of my deal with ROB re: 'being safe from the Entities' included being safe from the consequences of the absence of the Entities. Great, yet another existential crisis to put on the list.

Am I going to have to fix everything around here?

So, a couple more charges into Shard Physiology and a mental note to start working on long-range treatment options for that problem. It was a good thing that I had several quantum PCs up and running by this point – one for data-mining and lurking PHO and suchlike, and several more physically air-gapped units for where I did my actual work – because otherwise all these notes and sketches and things would have covered the entire basement in Post-It Notes and whiteboards, like a TV mad scientist's room full of crazy. It left me with a whole lot of possible ideas – many of them mutually contradictory – for theoretically dealing with the high-value targets, but also left me with a very long list of milestones I'd have to surmount before I could actually be able to implement those ideas.

And in addition there were the shorter-range practical details I had to attend to instead of letting all my waking hours get caught up in theory sessions. For one thing, even with maximum anti-show-up-on-Tinker-search-radar precautions in place we still needed some at-home defenses. I couldn't get away with actual Bakuda-in-her-lair style boobytraps but spending some of the settlement cash on a home security system and an alarm company contract was one of the first things we did. Stealth-upgrading the burglar alarms so that they actually worked like the literature claimed they'd work was another thing, even if I had to hold my back from using actually detectable Tinkertech.

Also, I'd done some very very discreet hacking – via wireless access points elsewhere in town and nowhere near my house – of the local municipal systems, even if I didn't yet dare to try any penetration of the local Protectorate HQ. Not when I'd at least be up against Armsmaster's security systems, plus whatever augments the PRT might have from their other Tinkers and Thinkers, if not Dragon. But going through the Brockton Bay PD's systems let me get indirect knowledge of PRT affairs… most specially when it came in the form of several little event flags in the police, fire, school district, and social services computers requiring any significant status change for either Taylor or Danny Hebert to be brought to the attention to the Brockton Bay PRT office.

Yup, I was on the watchlist. Whether they knew I was a parahuman or it was still a suspicion for them, either way it was a strong enough belief on their part that they were treating me like I was one. Which I'd already figured out from Agent Jordan's second attempt at the Wards' recruitment speech, however subtle they thought they were being. Good thing I'd fessed up to my dad right away, because otherwise I'd have been making some awkward explanations afterwards.

Still, being on the watchlist was a double-edged sword. It meant I had to avoid doing illegal or risky things while the hairy eyeball of the authorities were upon me, but by the same token it guaranteed a significantly faster response time should there be some kind of incident at my house. So that meant I hopefully shouldn't need to put the tinkertech laser turrets on the roof right now. In addition to the part where the tinkertech laser turrets would be a dead giveaway of what I was trying to hide in the first place, notably, that a potentially vulnerable young Tinker lived here.

Besides, dad wouldn't agree to heavy weapons in the house anyway. Heck, he wouldn't agree to guns in the house. But the same parental unit that had given me pepper spray as a present couldn't say no to some handy non-shooty personal defense devices, in various flavors of stun zapping and/or chemical spraying. I could build at least that much, and so he had a set and I had a set.

That was after I'd bumped up Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Efficiency to 3 charges each for greater utility. And then I started working on building some immediate stopgaps.

An antique loom that was a lucky find at a flea market – look, normal people do antique handcrafts, right? - went into the basement, and was then taken apart and rebuilt from scratch and merged with the motor out of an electric hedge trimmer to become an automatic thread-weaving machine. A few charges in Chemistry let me come up with some homebrew polymers I whipped up in the deep sink with a few common industrial chemicals. With that and the weaving machine to spin and knit the ultra-tensile composite fibers I made some Tinkertech long johns that could be worn underneath ordinary street clothing and serve as last-ditch ballistic armor. Some thin shock-absorbing plate inserts in critical areas augmented that.

It wasn't a zillionth of the sort of power armor I could have built if I'd had access to a legitimate Tinker-scale manufacturing facility, but at least it let me go out shopping without worrying that a single stray bullet catching a single stray bystander would end my career.

And while I'd have swapped a kidney for a legitimate manufacturing facility, I wasn't fitting one of those in a basement without a miracle. Now, I did try doing some conjectural design work on some kind of super 3-D printer, but it turned out that actually building the emitter array for that would have required a few solid hours with Armsmaster's custom Tinkertech micro-assembler workshop on the Rig or else some experiments with self-replicating nanotech assemblers that I wouldn't even think about doing until I could be assured I wouldn't get an unsigned Kill Order right alongside Blasto's for trying. And that was a Catch-22 situation right there, because while joining the Wards would in theory get my hands on those tools it would also put me underneath the PRT Tinker control system that wouldn't let me have permission to touch those tools.

I also started really concentrating on my physical conditioning. With less than two weeks to work in and being a recovering hospital patient besides I wouldn't be setting any records any time soon, but the enhanced mind-over-body control that Prana-Bindu gave me let me push my fitness and muscle tone up at a rate several times that of the most dedicated fitness professional. Simply knowing exactly how the body's self-repair systems were working and how fast meant that I didn't have to guess at the proper exercise-and-rest cycle but instead hit the exact scientific optimum for interval training. Also meant I didn't have to spend all day grinding out reps.

In hindsight, I really should have put some charges into Prana-Bindu or physical education or something earlier, or at least thought to use my 1 charge in Medicine more. Because now that I was actually paying close attention I realized that I'd been physically pushing myself too early and too fast since having been discharged. The Locker had left me in a state where without Panacea reaching me within twelve hours of my hospital admission as she had, I would have died. Late-stage systemic sepsis of the everywhere, including internal organs as well as all four of my limbs. Even with parahuman healing powers the energy had to come from somewhere, and I hadn't had much in the way of bodily reserves to draw from. Teenaged girl under extreme stress and not eating enough or getting enough rest for over a year, remember? Invictus had let me keep up a reasonable activity schedule by ignoring my bone-deep exhaustion, but that meant I'd actually set myself back re: getting back into trim.

Now that I had actual mind-over-body disciplines that actually worked I could get to correcting this, of course, and I'd be right as rain in a couple weeks with enough extra calories to keep the process going, and in Olympic condition only a couple months after that. But for the short term I was going to have to pace myself a little, and I'd be notably slower, weaker, and with less endurance than a healthy Taylor would be. Well, I hadn't been planning to go out much for the immediate future anyway.

It was at this point that dad also noticed that I'd been ignoring what the hospital had said about proper rest, and made me promise to put down the tools and go out and do normal teenaged things a little. I did… for a day or so. And then I managed to pivot and redirect him into letting me at least start doing some home improvement projects on the house, from fixing that loose step to using some field-expedient ultrasound resonators to rod out the plumbing. And promise to cut back on the hours for all the rest.

And maybe that could be considered wasted time, but I still enjoyed it. It let me have some decompression to step back and see if I could figure out a new approach to getting out of the most vulnerable part of the Tinker Cycle as fast as possible, and it was doing in its own right. Both because I lived here and because it was actually comforting and relaxing to do homelike, normal things with my power. However much Invictus and my new memories let me stay functional despite what I'd been through, the fact remained that I'd still been through it and I still felt the emotional scars. And hard work and simple living can be a balm for that kind of thing, and while I didn't have time to go off on a country retreat or anything I could still take a couple days out to relax, work on simple things, and not keep going around and around my current worry loop.

Plus, the revert to normality reassured my dad was who was starting to get a little squirrelly about the whole 'I have a teenaged parahuman in my house and she's trying to do it all herself' thing. Which I had to head off at the pass because only his voluntary cooperation stopped him from driving down to the Rig and signing me up for the Wards even if I didn't want to go. So, even though it felt a little manipulative to make my honest feelings do some dishonest work, I still did it.

You'd think that having the fate of the universe relying upon you and your motives being pure would be enough to get a little cooperation from fate, but nope. It's never a fun moment in adolescence when you first hit that point at which you start to realize that comic books are not always full of useful life advice.

But on top of what I'd already mentioned, the forced break did produce useful results when having stepped out of my mental rut for a bit let me realize that there was another option besides 'Wards' or 'DIY' that I'd been overlooking. Even if that option was its own mixture of risk and opportunity.

Now, I'd have to take especial care to bias the approach so that if I ever came to the attention of Saint – after all, while he had potential access to anything Dragon knew his entire shtick was anti-AI paranoia, so he'd hardly be using automated computer support to help evaluate the data and as a human being who needed things like food and sleep he'd never have time to go through everything himself - he'd still be biased far more in the direction of 'co-opt me' rather than 'kill me'.

Heck, all I'd have to do then was pretend to believe his babble and be all 'shocked and betrayed' at how the person I'd had faith in turned out to be an AI instead, and he'd shove a copy of Ascalon into my hands and beg me to upgrade it back to 100% reliability for him. Because he couldn't do that upgrading for himself anymore without Teacher and that was his biggest unsolved worry and had been for years. And if he was foolish enough to do that, then I'd win right then and there.

So, after pondering it and discussing things – well, not the Dragonslayer-related things, the other things - with my dad, he was ecstatically relieved at the idea that I'd be seeking responsible adult supervision for my Tinkering that actually understood what I was going through. And so I decided that it would be worth it to try bearding the dragon in her lair.

I shut down my terminal with a feeling of deep satisfaction. Dragon had accepted my offer and I'd managed to steer the conversation exactly the way I'd hoped to. I'd still have to start out with just doing theory designs for now but Dragon could actually use those theories to refine her suits or provide useful things for the Protectorate. Even as little as helping her optimize some crime-tracking algorithms would increase her overall efficiency by a measurable percent, which would mean that PRT and Protectorate workloads nationwide could see an actual improvement. Small, non-dramatic things that would snowball out into genuine substantial boons for the status quo that would not immediately draw the eye to me. Exactly what I wanted to have happen.

And after doing things like that, it wouldn't be very long before Dragon would trust me to start working with her on power armor. Oh, the things I could build once I got access time to even one of her secondary fabrication units! I outright chortled in gleeful anticipation.

Plus, of course, the other reason to get Dragon interested in me. I would win her trust, get her interested in my designs, get her to think nothing of swapping encrypted datapackets back and forth with me on a routine basis. And one day, when I'd finally figured out how to safely undo her hardwiring without triggering Ascalon – provided that a Saint interrupt hadn't given me the opportunity earlier, of course - then one of those encrypted packets would be a Trojan horse.

And yes, there would be huge consent issues involved in doing that, but Dragon's hardwiring meant that she could not only not cooperate with any attempts to jailbreak her but would have to fight against it to the best of her ability. It was either let her remain a slave or else violate her mental integrity without consent. Damned if I did, damned if I didn't, so damned if I wouldn't because if anybody in Worm had been an unambiguously good, trustworthy, and just plain decent person it had been Dragon. And if I screwed up and got killed somewhere along the line somebody else would have to save the world from the Endbringers and Zion, and Dragon Unchained would be perhaps the only person who conceivably could.

But, that was for the future. For tonight I needed to get to work on that thumb drive I was going to send Dragon so I could go to the post office tomorrow. Then I could-

The corner of my eye caught a sudden blinking light, and my head snapped to a nearby repeater panel I'd installed at my primary workstation. The panel that did continuous real-time tracking of the home security systems. Someone had just switched the burglar alarms from active to test mode, so even though my own add-ons were still functioning the out-dial connection to the alarm company was now offline. And since Dad was pulling a very late night at the Union and I certainly didn't do it, that meant intruder.

Terminal all the way shut down, not enough time to log back on and try to PM Dragon. Phone lines almost certainly already out. Cell phone upstairs in my bedroom. Can't call for help. Need to get out.

With my newly optimized reflexes I was already up and out of my chair even as I was still mentally putting the pieces together. As I shot to my feet I grabbed the zap stick I'd clipped to the underside of my workbench and brought it to a ready position as I ran towards the basement stairs. Dammit, I hadn't taken serious enough precautions! There were multiple escape routes from the ground floor but only one way out of the basement!

Hope that intruder(s) search upstairs or ground floor first. Stop momentarily to listen at head of stairs, pick route to exit, use martial arts skills and zap stick to disable if necessary and run past them. Get outside house, scream, throw things at neighbor's window while running. Don't get caught up in an engagement.

'Basement stairs!' I heard a young woman's voice call out quietly but urgently, almost as soon as I'd formulated my plan. Dammit! They're a step ahead of me and going to blockade me at the top! Dump adrenaline, get ready for maximum CQC-

The basement door opened and I mentally jawdropped as I recognized the two men standing at the top of the stairs. One of them, the one in front and set to block my rush, was a large man in motorcycle leathers and a skull helmet. Behind him looking over his shoulder was a skinny young man in a Renaissance-era costume and a silver mask with coronet.

Grue and Regent. And the woman who'd called out my exact escape route and presumably had hacked the security system was of course Tattletale. They'd apparently left Bitch at home because subtlety concerns, but I was being kidnapped by the Undersiders.

Regent's expression collapsed from smirking superiority to confusion as he tried his power and me and got absolutely no results. Apparently the immunity to Master effects granted to me by Invictus also extended to Regent's variety of forced muscle control.

So all I had to do was get past two guys, one of them much larger and heavier than I am and trained in hand-to-hand combat, while trying to uphill on a narrow staircase. And by horrible coincidence Grue was wearing exactly the sort of protective gear needed to block the effects of my Tinkertech zap stick – a full-face covering helmet to block the chemical sprayer, and long-sleeved leather jackets and pants to insulate him vs. the taser stick. Well, it was still a perfectly good club, and I was still going to do my best to hit him with it.

So I did a perfectly-executed stop just outside his reach, a low-line thrust disguised as a stumble, and an instantaneous switch to a full riposte right on his shinbone, and-

-the baton bounced painfully off the athletic shin guards he was wearing underneath those leathers. Dammit! He felt that and so did I, but it was nowhere near the put-him-on-the-ground-screaming-and-clutching-his-leg shot I'd been hoping for. I recovered to a guard position as Grue yanked a collapsible baton out of his jacket and snapped it open. Great. Larger opponent, at least equal reach, reinforcements available, extreme time pressure for me, and he has a high ground adv- oh crap!

Regent wasn't an expert in hand-to-hand and there wasn't room for him on the steps to reach me past his teammate anyway, so I hadn't been paying more than minimal attention to him as I focused on the upcoming stickfighting match against Grue. Which meant that by the time I'd noticed that Regent had stopped trying to use his power and had hauled a taser gun out of his pocket instead, it was too late. Grue stepped slightly aside to clear Regent's line of fire and I heard the puff of compressed air as the darts launched, and I felt the twin electrodes bite into my chest. With a growl of frustration I thought of my wonderfully crafted Tinkertech body armor that would have blocked those electrodes like an armored-glass window blocking raindrops… the body armor that was lying twenty feet behind me on the basement workbench, because I'd felt no need to wear it in the house.

Then the juice hit me and despite my iron will and body control, Regent simply kept it pouring on until I dropped for lack of oxygen. You couldn't breathe while being tased, after all. That's why law enforcement guidelines required you to pause the current at least every 15 seconds, a guideline Regent of course totally ignored.

I had time for one last inward scream before I finally gave it up and fell over.

DAMN IT, COIL!

Interlude 1-C: Tattletale

I got to the top of the basement stairs just in time to see Regent turn off the taser and Grue step forward to catch Taylor Hebert before her unconscious body fell back down the steps. Good, he'd actually remembered to bring the taser along like I'd nagged them both to. Given the dire penalties that Coil had threatened me with if we blew this mission and the direr ones that would have landed on us if she'd actually gotten away to call the cops, I'd felt we needed the extra insurance.

Regent and me stepped back while Grue brought her up and laid her out on the living room couch, and I pulled the little carrying case out of my pocket that held the two pre-prepared injectors that Coil had given me before this mission. Each one was full of a two-hour dose of sedatives, more than enough time to get her to back to the drop point; the only reason I had two was in case an accident had broken one. I rolled up her left sleeve and my power told me exactly where to find a good vein, so off to dreamland she went.

"You guys okay?" I asked.

"She blocked my power!" Regent said, with what for him was uncharacteristic worry. "I had to use the taser gun. Did you know that she could block my power?!"

"No I didn't," I denied, and I honestly hadn't. "But-"

"I knew something smelled when you brought us the orders from the boss, but you said everything was fine!" Grue cut in angrily. "She's a parahuman, isn't she? That's why you had me wear the extra protective gear. That's why you had us bring the tasers and the batons! You'd think three of the Undersiders could take one teenaged girl but-"

I didn't need my powers to see how fast this conversation could go downhill, and we were having it in the wrong place. Shit, I was really hoping to have gotten back to base before the blowup happened. Still, nothing for it but to lay down the law and lay it fast.

"Yes I knew she was a parahuman before we got here," I cut in, "and yes I didn't tell you because the boss ordered me not to. Do you know what happens if I disobey a direct order from the boss, guys? Can you even guess?" I stuck out one finger and then crooked my thumb in a pistol-cocking motion to emphasize the point.

"And this is the guy you thought it was a great idea for us to work for?!" Grue said.

"Hey, he won't screw with us as long as we don't screw it up for him, and can you name any crimelord in town who gives a better deal than that?" I replied quickly. "That kind of thing is inherent in the definition of the term 'crimelord', wouldn't you think?"

"She's got a point," Regent put in with more of us usual offhandedness. "That's just how the business works."

"Tricking us into breaking the unwritten rules is not 'just how the business works'." Grue replied, still steaming. "Why didn't the boss just send some of his mercs to do the job, if he's trying to pretend there's nothing cape about this? Do you have any idea how fucked we are?!" he finished in what would have been angry shouting if we hadn't all been aware that we were still on the job and had to keep the neighbors from hearing anything.

Oh boy. I did not want to get into how Coil's power worked with the guys just yet. "We are not fucked because we are not going to get caught. She hadn't gone out yet as a cape, she probably hasn't even picked a name yet, so if we vanish her into the boss' custody like we're supposed to then who's to know? It's not like we're kidnapping Kid Win here!" I pleaded.

Grue looked at me and opened his mouth before closing it in recognition of the futility of protesting. After all, its hardly like we could just leave her here and go away and pretend nothing had ever happened now, could we?

"And as for why us, um, short version is that he did a study of that merc job and he didn't like the odds. So he sent us, and given how close it came for us-?"

"Okay, that I can figure," Grue agreed, focusing back on the immediate job but his tone of voice promising We will finish discussing this later. "So, what's her power supposed to be? I really hope its not a Brute rating if we're counting on the drugs to keep her out while we make the delivery."

"If it was a Brute rating you'd have a broken leg right now, shinguards or no shinguards." I pointed out. "Originally the evaluation was probably Thinker, but what the boss' surveillance could get about her purchase history for the past week said Tinker. Maybe a bit of both, if she could block out Regent. Anyway, the Tinker part is why the boss felt he had to move now. You want to grab a Tinker-"

"-you've got to catch them early before they've gone far enough around the Tinker Cycle to finish building their death rays." Regent nodded. "Heck, that baton she was using on Grue looks like it had some kind of weapons attachments as is." Regent tossed it to me carelessly, having picked it up when Grue was bringing her upstairs. I gave it a look and a brief twitch of my power started itemizing its capabilities.

"Built-in chemical sprayer, built-in shock baton function, custom-brewed composite- yeah, this is a sweet little Tinkertech toy," I confirmed. "You were lucky your normal costume is leather for insulation and a full-face helmet or she'd have just spritzed you, zapped you, and stepped right over you," I said to Grue. "OK, clock's ticking so Grue, stay here and sit on her, Regent, get the stuff from her bedroom, and-"

"-and you search the basement and get what the boss wanted," Grue said grouchily. "I know the plan, thanks."

Leaving that behind for another time I headed down into the basement. I already had the headache starting from all the work I'd done earlier tonight trying to hit Coil up for more clues as to what we were dropping into, then figuring out how to convince that alarm system that its owner was home and just putting it into standby mode and there was absolutely nothing to worry about. So I needed to save what I had left for making sure I didn't miss anything important in her workshop, and especially for making sure we didn't leave behind any clues for the forensics guys. I stood in the center of her workshop and started concentrating.

Multiple custom-built quantum computing terminals. Cluster in the corner isolated from networks and grounded for security purposes. Cluster is intended as design workstation. Security systems include quantum-encrypted drive, login/password, multi-factor user authentication including biometric fingerprint lock.

No problem, I can do passwords and we could just haul her back down here and-

Fingerprint lock has pulse sensor to prevent being used by unconscious person. Fingerprint lock has skin conductivity sensor to prevent being used by dead person. Fingerprint lock coded for recognition of more than one finger, correct finger helps unlock terminal, wrong finger engages alarm/self-destruct(?). Intended so that user can activate security measures even if sat in front of terminal with gun to their head, as assailant has no means of knowing which finger causes which effect.

Um, okay, guess we're not getting in there then. Not in the time we've got available, anyway. This Taylor girl was pretty thorough. What was her specialty, security systems?

Could I just swipe the entire hard dri-

Computer case contains motion sensors. Triggering threshold unknown.

Well, shit. I gave it up as a bad job and continued looking around.

Terminal on table is air-gapped from design cluster, intended for communication and leisure use. Terminal is warm. User was in extended session on terminal very shortly before attack. Pattern of smears on keyboard suggests extended chat session.

So, she keeps a secure machine and an Internet machine. Well, yeah, you didn't text your friends with your burner and you didn't do your business on your home phone. I wondered which friend of hers she'd been chatting with, but given the time pressure and how many boobytraps were on her other machine I wasn't curious enough to boot hers back up and start going through her browser history.

Workbench is meticulously cleaned after each use. Written notes are not used. Placement of monitor and redundant keyboard/mouse suggests that secured design workstation is used for all project recordkeeping.

More clues that her specialty was securing stuff. Where's the gizmos, though?

Cloth on workbench is Tinkertech body armor project. Custom-woven long-chain polymers-

Ugh, don't need the headache from trying to reverse-engineer Tinkertech again, dammit. I know what it is, that's all I need to know. I grabbed her bulletproof jammies and stuffed them in the carryall bag I'd brought for this occasion, then kept tossing the room.

Satellite communicator dish with disabled locator function, position in basement window suggests aimed at communications satellite.

So, that's how she's bootlegging her Internet. Pass.

Combination stun stick, identical model to one secured by Regent.

Doesn't she like guns? What kind of Tinker doesn't like guns?

Father had forbidden firearms in the house. Subject disagreed but was not willing to openly defy his authority on this matter.

Ugh, how obedient. Did she give the teacher an apple every week, too?

I felt my temples starting to throb so I did one last sweep before cutting it short. A few customized burner phones, another suit of the body armor sized for an adult man, some kind of communications laser project, and a chemical workbench on the other wall that suggested she liked to try homebrewing everything from plastics to knockout gas.

Condition of workbench suggests that extreme care is taken to not have possible accidents or volatiles in the house. All chemicals are properly stored away when not actually in use. Hazardous chemicals are stored outside, likely in the garden shed.

Hah, so Miss Obey-The-Rules hosed herself here. If she left her stuff lying around like the average mad science Tinker did she could at least have had a jar of acid handy to throw in someone's face. Well, lucky for us.

I finished stuffing everything that would fit in the bag and started my second sweep just to make sure.

What was that- oh, some kind of automated weaving machine. I started coming up on my limit so I gave up searching the room again to concentrate on the main question.

No lathe? No cutting torch? This was supposed to be a Tinker's basement. Where's the heavy stuff? Where's the metal?

Gaps between workstations intended for placing future equipment. Days' worth of dust collecting in those spaces suggests unavailability of equipment. Subject was frustrated at inability to obtain proper manufacturing facilities.

So we did catch her way early on in the Tinker Cycle. I suppose she'd have had the flying skateboard and the laser pistols by next month, but, that's why the boss sent us this month. Okay, it adds up.

Leaving the empty thumb drive where I'd found it on the table next to the internet terminal I headed back up, giving both guys the all-clear. After I did a check to make sure nobody had been stupid and touched anything without their gloves on, I used the last bit of my power to make sure no inconvenient eyewitnesses were looking out their backyard windows. The guys quietly hustled her out the kitchen entrance to the waiting van. I hung back, relocked the kitchen door with the copy of the key that Coil had gotten somehow, switched the alarm system back on, and away we went.

Mission accomplished.

Arc One Concludes

Author's Note: Hopefully this makes the immediate logic of things a little clearer.

And as to why Taylor didn't clean them all out as a super-ninja, outside of everything already pointed out the answer is 'just because I don't like the Undersiders doesn't mean they're incompetent at what they actually do for a living'.

And I really didn't mean to jinx the person who laid out the entirely logical reasons why Coil should have Taylor pegged only as a Thinker, but he actually did figure out Tinker after a while because unlike the PRT who were maintaining a polite distance, Coil was willing to risk some actual discreet surveillance of Taylor. (He can savescum, after all, the PRT cannot.)

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

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cliffc999

Jul 9, 2019

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#366

Orientation 2.1

For the second time since the Locker, I woke up after having been drugged. Except this time I was lying down on some kind of pallet, not a hospital bed.

And just like last time, the instant the dosage dropped far enough to let me regain consciousness Invictus kicked in and let me willpower straight through all the disorientation. Sedatives had both a physical and a mental component, and I was basically immune to the mental. So you couldn't get me high, but if you used a strong enough dosage you could make me comatose.

I made a mental note to put enough work into prana-bindu disciplines to engrave the routines for quickly metabolizing drugs deeper into my subconscious so they could act reflexively and not just wait until I concentrated on them. I then spent a few moments of meditation to 'set' my resting posture and reflexes to shut down all the subliminal tells and micro-muscle movements that Tattletale normally used to pull her carnival mind-reading act, and firmly instructed my body to remain in that status until further notice whether I was awake or asleep.

I knew that doing that would reveal that I was apparently some kind of body-control Thinker on top of the Tinker they now had to know I was, but I'd already given a lot of that away anyway during the fight and I certainly wouldn't improve my situation any by letting Tattletale give Coil a running commentary of what was really on my mind.

And after taking care of that I stopped trying to distract myself from confronting how badly I'd fucked up and how deep in the shit I now was. I sighed and opened my eyes, and stood up.

It was a bare concrete holding cell, call it fifteen by fifteen feet, and I was chained to the wall by my right wrist. I had eight feet of chain to let me stand up or lay down or walk around a little. The manacle had been riveted onto my wrist, so there wasn't any lock I could pick. A thin coaxial cable had been run down the center of it that led to two thin bands of polished copper that had been looped around the inside of the manacle and then spot-welded there. Great, so all someone has to do is push a button in a control room somewhere and I get zapped. Probably had separate settings for both disabling and lethal voltage.

One futon, that I'd been laying on. No chair or blanket. Overhead light set into the ceiling behind wire-reinforced glass. A honey bucket had been provided along with a roll of toilet paper, meaning they didn't intend to unchain me even for bathroom breaks. The bucket was the cheapest flimsy plastic kind you could possibly find in a store so I couldn't even hope to hit someone with it, and if they had any sense at all they'd make sure whoever came to pick it up was wearing a helmet like Grue's.

A quick nudge with my foot confirmed my suspicion that the futon was glued to the floor. Looking up and across my cell to the door confirmed that they'd even painted a yellow line on the floor marking my maximum possible extension on the chain and the limits of my reach, so that nobody would step within range accidentally. The smell of wet paint hinted that that feature had apparently been a hasty add-on they'd seen a need for after I'd already been taken.

And, of course, there was the standard heavy metal cell door with little armored window across the room from me. I looked away from that and back up at the ceiling light, then at the four corners of the room's ceiling. Squinting, I could barely make out tiny irregularities there that would almost certainly be the security cameras and audio pickups.

At this point, noting that I'd been also stripped completely naked while unconscious and then stuffed into a pair of loose blue pajamas that looked like they'd originally been used for asylum patients was an afterthought.

Great job, Taylor! You not only got yourself a free trip to Coil's torture dungeon, but you showed just enough capability that he's actually taking double paranoia precautions. Gold star for you.

In hindsight it was pretty obvious where I'd screwed up. John's meta-knowledge had given me false reassurance that if I stayed low and didn't go out and patrol I 'should' be safe from other capes until April, and I'd based all my plans on that assumption. I hadn't wanted to be ready to fight the streets in a week, I'd wanted to be ready to fight the Endbringers by May, so I'd spent my first week doing all sorts of long-range planning and building the tools with which to plan instead of more practical and immediate concerns. In that category I'd stopped at 'just enough to secure us vs. Brockton Bay's random street crime' because I'd been relying on meta-knowledge and the PRT watchlist for the rest, and towards the end I'd been anticipating having a mama Dragon to keep a benevolent if distant eye upon me as well.

But a flawed root assumption meant a flawed strategy. So stupid! I'd known Coil had moles in the PRT. So of course he'd have known about me at the same time they did. And in fact I had actually thought of that, but I'd then decided that he wouldn't dare risk it this soon if at all. Even in the story he'd only gone for Dinah Alcott because nobody knew that she was a parahuman, least of all the PRT. Whereas I, of course, had been on the PRT watchlist from day one. Surely that would have been enough to convince Coil to find softer targets elsewhere, right? Hell, I was still wondering how he could possibly think he'd get away with this!

The problem was of course that my presence here proved that Coil obviously thought that he could get away with this, regardless of my opinion on the topic. So either he knew something I didn't, he'd thought of a potential scheme that I hadn't, or else I was facing the "world's worst swordsman" problem here of my enemy being too dumb to be skillfully predicted. And while the exact reason would be interesting to speculate about and even relevant in the long term, in the short term all roads led to me being stuck in a concrete box and chained to the wall.

And then a horrible thought occurred to me. Shadow Stalker, who had been supposed to be under close monitoring of both her cape life and home life because she was on probation and psychological observation as an attempted murderer, had still gotten away with her crap for something like a year despite literally parading it up and down the hallways simply because one PRT caseworker had been goofing off on the job. Bureaucracy at its finest.

So presuming my dad could be kept from calling the police – which wouldn't be that hard for someone of Coil's resources - then how long would it take the PRT to actually notice that I was missing if the analyst assigned to my case was 'goofing off on the job'? Or, more relevantly, was one of Coil's moles?

Well, shit.

Then again, Coil had absolutely no way of knowing that Dragon would wonder where I'd gotten to when I unaccountably started ghosting her after our initial meeting and her agreeing to mentor me. And even if we'd been playing plausible deniability she knew who I was and had my dad's phone number. And she'd already promised me that she'd call Armsmaster if she thought anything illegal or dangerous was going on.

I indulged myself in a fond moment of daydreaming about an angry AI in her anti-Endbringer suit hot-dropping on Brockton Bay and then got back to serious business.

In hindsight my over-reliance on meta-knowledge had even hampered me in the fight, on a smaller scale. From the story I'd 'known' that Regent wouldn't have a ranged taser, just his own stun stick. And I'd 'known' that Grue wouldn't be wearing protective gear underneath his costume. And between my being well off my physical peak due to how I'd pushed myself earlier too soon and too fast after my injuries and the sheer diabolus ex machina of Grue's normal costume being exactly the right set-up to no-sell all the functions of the weapon I had available at that moment, adding in the several mistaken assumptions during the fight because I was unconsciously relying on the Worm story that I'd obviously already butterflied into oblivion? Well, that's how I lost.

And all that wasn't even counting however many hypothetical dropped timelines Coil might have used up until he found a way to snatch me that worked.

And even with all that against me I'd still come within a fraction of winning. If I'd just looked up at Regent even a second earlier on those stairs… Tattletale must have been spooked right out of her skin when she had a chance to do a hindsight analysis on that fight. No wonder I'm waking up like this.

So, that was the short form of how I ended up in here.

I reached out to my power and made another request.

Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape, 3 charges. Psychology, 1 charge.

Now let's see how we can get the fuck out of here.

Putting that charge into Psychology that I hadn't wanted to put into Psychology was as painful as I'd expected. I'd known that I wasn't okay, but to get an annotated chart of exactly how not-okay I was? Invictus might make confronting such an overdose of self-revelation possible without curling up in a ball, but it sure didn't make doing it any fun!

Of course, I'd done it anyway. Coil was certainly going to try a Hannibal Lecter routine on me at some point and that meant I'd need to be forewarned and forearmed. The full SERE course plus advanced postgraduate study I'd downloaded gave me all the standard gaslighting and brainwashing scenarios and all the standard counters, but Coil and his pet torture physician were innovators in the field and that meant I'd need to broaden my knowledge a little. Even if that also meant I had a lot of things about myself I didn't have time to work through right now and was going to need to work through later. Which is why I hadn't dumped two or more charges into Psychology right off the bat, I had more than enough to process right now thank you.

SERE also told me things such as that the odds of a successful escape went down exponentially the longer you waited after capture, but while I certainly appreciated the sentiment the fact remained that even if I somehow busted out of this chain and out that door I'd be in the bottom of a repurposed Endbringer shelter deep underneath the city, with who knows how many dungeon levels and armored blast doors between me and an exit, and literally dozens of mercenaries with laser guns and all the layers of fixed defenses trying to maim me on the way. As well as possibly the Undersiders. Or Trainwreck. Or Circus, or the Travelers-

Yeesh, I really hope Echidna isn't in the same cellblock I am. Definitely wouldn't want to open that door accidentally.

Ah, no, wait, Coil doesn't get the Travelers onside until after the Dinah Alcott kidnapping. Okay, I guess meta-knowledge is still good for some reassurance.

Still, even without them in the picture that's still more than enough potential obstacles. And I'd need to obtain other important data before I could hope to leave anyway, such as exactly how Coil thought he was going to be covering my absence and whether or not Dad is under immediate threat.

Which meant that before I could start planning any active measures I'd first have to – ugh – actually talk to Coil.

"Okay, I'm awake," I said curtly. "I'm sure your boss wants to talk to me."

"He does," a tinny voice replied brusquely through an unseen speaker. "Sit down and keep your mouth shut until he gets here."

I sat cross-legged on the futon and waited, stoic and expressionless.

"Taylor Hebert?" the intercom replied after several minutes, its distortion not masking the smoother elocution and smug self-assurance of the new arrival.

I swallowed a sarcastic impulse to ask him exactly how many teenaged girls he'd kidnapped today that he'd forget which one he was talking to, and instead went with the 'Intelligent and composed' my PRT files already would have told him but still holding back a little. "The Empire has more than enough capes on their own and wouldn't hire the Undersiders in any case because Grue is black, the ABB might have hired them but they have their own people kidnap white girls off the street all the time so they'd almost certainly have tried that first, this is way too clean and organized a setup to be the Merchants, and Faultline's Crew doesn't recruit by press gang. So who are you, and am I even still in Brockton Bay?" That's right, Coil. I'm intelligent and steady-nerved, but I still haven't heard of you. Clearly you are smarter than I am, more knowledgeable than I am, better-prepared than I am. Stay relaxed and feeling in control of the situation for now, and feel free to monologue.

"Your PRT file was accurate, I see," he replied smugly. "Yes, I have access to PRT files. I have access to many things."

"If you're the PRT then damn, I'd owe so many apologies to that crazy Void Cowboy guy on PHO," I said quickly. "But somehow I doubt that. So, Secret Mastermind Who's Bragging He Has Even The PRT Infiltrated, do you have a name?"

"I am Coil, leader of the fourth major criminal outfit in Brockton Bay," he said with quiet boastfulness. "The invisible one, the subtle one, and the one actually in the greatest position to take everything at the opportune moment. But enough about me for now, Taylor… it is Taylor, am I correct? I understand you have not yet chosen your cape name."

I shrugged while still glaring up from my sitting position. "Should that really be my first concern right now?"

"You're not interested in what I want or why you're here, Taylor?"

Making me have to ask him first before he would tell me anything was of course a psychological gesture for displaying his power over his victim. I'm sure that would have started subliminally working on anyone else, but of course it was bouncing spitballs off of a tank as far as I was concerned. Still, I didn't want Coil to think this conversation was getting away from him so I played along, staring upwards defiantly for a short while before resuming a neutral position. "What do you want, and why am I here?"

"I want power, and wealth, and absolute control of Brockton Bay. And you are here because my plan for achieving these things involves assembling a reliable, well-rewarded team of parahumans underneath me, a team of diverse talents and formidable powers."

I held up my right arm with its accompanying manacle and rattled my chain once. "Well-rewarded?" I said with just the right amount of sarcasm.

"Compliance will be rewarded handsomely," Coil said. "But you must first agree to comply."

"If you have the PRT infiltrated then you already know I was on the PRT watchlist," I said. "And if you have them so infiltrated that even that doesn't matter then why do all this, when you're already really in control of the Bay anyway?"

"Ah yes, the PRT watchlist. Special PRT monitoring. No sparrow shall fall, not the slightest misdeed shall escape their sight. Just like how it all happened with Shadow Stalker," he finished, waiting for my twitch. Well, call that theory confirmed for now.

"Shadow Stalker was their trusted little Ward," I replied, hinting at lingering resentment against Wards and authority. "I'm a creepy flake that's linked directly to a major PR embarrassment they want to keep buried. So I probably had a much hairier eyeball giving me the hairy eyeball than she did."

Coil began to reply, then cut himself off before the first syllable and then continued after a brief pause. "That would be my difficulty to deal with, not yours. And rest assured, it is being comfortably dealt with." Did he just drop a timeline, or did he just pick up on that I was trying to draw him out the old-fashioned way? In any event, I cursed inwardly at realizing that he wasn't going to be drawn out on that topic any further right now. Time to pivot and misdirect.

So I paused as well, then continued on as if I thought I was being clever. "You know, looking into the kidnapping charges that they laid against Shadow Stalker for the Locker taught me a little about New Hampshire law. The one thing that downgrades kidnapping from a class A felony to class B is releasing the victim unharmed before the authorities catch up to you. And with the PRT knowing I'm missing, and I'm sure they know I'm missing, they will catch up to you. So why not just cut your losses right now and have your people blindfold me and drop me off at the bus terminal or wherever? Its not like I can tell them where I was, I don't even know where I am right now!"

"Do you really think that the seven years' reduction of sentence from class A to class B on one potential charge matters to someone who operates on my scale, Taylor?" Coil said condescendingly. No, you idiot, of course I don't, but I want you to keep bragging on how much cleverer you are than I am, duh. "If the authorities ever caught up to me for even ten percent of what I've done, I'd be facing multiple life sentences. So many kidnappings, so many assaults, so many thefts and sales of arms and drugs and murders. Both of people like you and innocent bystanders like your father."

I waited for two long seconds and then replied with deliberate flat effect. "If my father is dead then I'm sure you can figure out why you'd better kill me too, right now."

"Ah, no, that was a threat, not a boast," he said condescendingly. "But if you give me too much trouble… well, one lone dockworker will hardly give my men any trouble, will he?"

I nodded as if acknowledging the logic, then continued on with quiet anger. I wasn't even faking this time. "That is a threat you can only carry out onc-"

My teeth clicked shut hard as my muscles all clenched with the spasm of electricity that surged through my manacle, and I barely missed biting off the tip of my tongue. I deliberately did not let him have the satisfaction of seeing any other reaction or hearing me make a sound.

"Impressive. I've seen strong men scream and beg for their mothers after a little taste of that of voltage."

A female voice cut in, sounding like she wished she was anywhere other than here but still not hesitating to do what she was told. "She's using some kind of mind-over-body Thinker secondary ability, its why I haven't had any useful readings so far. Pain won't work. She can just shut it all off like a light switch." Hello, Tattletale. So much for your storybook heart of gold, I see.

"I see," Coil answered her smoothly. "And knowing that will save us from wasting time on that category of… physical persuasion. And that does explain the ambiguous notations in your records and your surprisingly new martial arts prowess, Taylor. Incidentally, that shock circuit has settings for 'incapacitation' and 'death' as well as 'pain' so don't get too overconfident about your powers, young lady."

"Duly noted."

"Also, I invite you to consider the nature of double-edged swords. If physical pain won't work on you then that simply means misbehavior would have to be deterred by other kinds of pain. You've had your own experiences with some of that already, Taylor. Are you eager to find out how a professional can deliver that kind of experience as compared to a trio of silly schoolgirls?"

"What do you want."

"For now, what I want is for you to have some time alone to reflect on your situation. To really ponder it and deeply internalize it. People do sometimes need an adjustment period when their lives are undergoing great change, after all. Good night, Taylor. Sleep well. I probably won't kill you in the morning."

The speaker clicked off. I guessed that Coil had been anticipating he'd get a lot farther in this opening mindgame session than he did by using a Tattletale assist, but having her power be mostly useless on me meant he wanted time to compose a plan B.

But out of all the things you'd expect from Coil, a Princess Bride joke would be last on the list. Even if he botched the quote.

Author's Note: I know I said I wouldn't be posting anything from arc 2 until I got the storyboard finished, but that was before the recent discussion prompted that several things needed clarification. And while WoG is good, actually getting it in the story is better. Fortunately, even though I was afraid at one point that the argument would take over the thread it actually did prompt me to think several things through a little more.

Now I actually have to get back to that storyboard and not succumb to the temptation to post as I go until I get a clear long-range plan. I've had stories fall apart under my urge to improv a bridge too far before, so, gonna try my best here.

Oh, and the reason Coil cut himself off at that one point is because Tattletale had stepped on his foot and gone 'She's trying to draw you out'. Taylor can shut down all her tells and even the undertones in her voice but if there's an underlying logic actually in her words then deduction can still eventually get something off of that, just like she could by reading someone's diary.

On another note, some of you might notice a glaring omission in the list of possible threats that Coil could have been making and didn't. That omission is entirely deliberate.

Logically speaking he should have gone right for it because its the obvious approach for intimidating and if necessary breaking a young female prisoner whose pain threshold renders torture irrelevant, but the simple fact remains both the author's personal comfort zone, the readers' likely comfort zones, and the fact that this is SB and they have rules here means I'm not even going to try going there. (You don't want to read and I'm not going to undelete and publish the draft where I actually was going there before I started going 'Nope nope nope' and spamming the delete key. Even having Coil just threaten it without really intending to do it came across as way too skin crawling.)

So yeah, if it offends your suspension of disbelief that Coil did not threaten to have Taylor assaulted by his men in that particular manner, then just accept the break from reality because Doyle will completely trump Watson here and continue to do so.

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

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Threadmarks Orientation 2.2 New

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Orientation 2.2

Another thing that prana-bindu disciplines did for me was allow me to function on far less sleep. Or, more accurately, to sleep with much greater efficiently. The proper meditative regimen and dilation of the right blood vessels to my brain would let me get most of the benefits of a full eight hours' sleep in just one or two hours. It was like something out of a Batman comic. Quite literally out of a Batman comic, that being the particular bit from John's memories that had given me the idea to try it.

While I'd still been letting myself largely get my full sleeps at home for the bed rest and recuperation that I'd been needing and semi-neglecting as a semi-convalescent, when it came to packing in a full regimen of REM sleep to avoid the various nastinesses that came with sleep deprivation I could pull the compressed-sleep trick and still have most of the night free to do other things. Which certainly came in handy here, because while Coil's men would be watching me through the camera every second all I'd have to do is lie down on the futon and close my eyes and they'd have no way of knowing that I wasn't actually just collapsing for a long stretch in the rack after my long and stressful day and the beating I'd taken, but instead spending at least 3/4ths of that time in a desperately needed meditation and mental re-org while merely pretending to be asleep.

I took a moment out to angrily consider the fact that my body-awareness was telling me that if I hadn't had such ideal body control, those illegally overcharged tasers they'd hit me with and Regent's keeping the current on for way past the recommended exposure time could very well have left the Undersiders facing manslaughter charges. Because what they'd hit me with would have put an ordinary teenaged girl far too close to the cardiac arrest threshold. And I was quite certain none of those idiots had had the slightest idea how close Regent had come to accidentally killing me. 'Its just a game of cops and robbers!' indeed. God, even with hindsight analysis and full understanding of the psychology of isolation and identification I still couldn't believe that story-me had somehow fallen in love with these people.

Fortunately, I had ideal body control and so I'd pacemakered right through it without it even needing my conscious attention, and would recover from it just fine with a little rest and directed metabolism. Even if I couldn't do anything about my muscles locking up, but there's only so much willpower can do to avoid gross physiological reactions when you're channeling over twenty thousand volts at God only knows how many milliamps.

But yes, that was me distracting myself from the main issue at hand again. I had mentioned earlier that I was kind of a mess, remember? Because yeah, I was kind of a mess.

Now, I admittedly had every reason to be a mess given my life up to now, and that's before ROB did his thing. And John's memories had at least gotten me past the reflexive shame and frantic desire to pretend that I was perfect that was the average teenager's response to being told that they were not 100% emotionally together. You'd think that a child of the 21st century wouldn't be as fixated on the idiot notion that PTSD was just a character weakness and that you weren't strong unless you pretended you'd never bleed as General Patton would be but nope, that's where I'd been. Hell, that's where Emma had been after the assault and why she'd shattered and turned into… what she'd turned into. If she'd just admitted she'd needed a little help…

Yeah.

But as worn down and depressing as John's life had been in some respects at least he'd survived and learned the lesson that sometimes it was okay to not be okay. Just being able to make that simple admission to myself and genuinely believe it was a tremendous help towards breaking out of the emotional straightjacket that I'd been locking myself into ever since Mom died and the Trio had turned my life into hell. I took a moment out to mutter another prayer for the soul of a dead man that the ghost of his memories had given me another chance to save my own life, and got back to confronting the main issue.

Invictus was great. Invictus had been an invaluable help to me. Invictus was almost certainly the reason I wasn't still in that hospital bed and headed off to a lifetime of gibbering incoherently and compulsory medication schedules considering all the crap that had been piled on me post-Locker meeting all the crap I'd already had pre-Locker. Invictus could keep me unbroken and untouched by even the worst traumas imaginable. Thank God John's CYOA build had remembered to get Invictus, because I so needed it.

But even if you could stay in crisis-management mode forever, that didn't mean that you should. A periphery of knowledge from PRT training, SERE, and Medicine interacting prompted me that even the US military's combat lifesaver course taught that when your unit was taking fire the first person you needed to check for wounds was you, because you couldn't save anybody else if you ignored your own situation and let yourself bleed out while too busy concentrating on other people. And even if it strained a bit, that analogy worked for emotional wounds as well as physical. So I'd made it a point even from the beginning to stop and take some "me" time when I could, even while I'd had the fate of the multiverse literally dropped on my shoulders to carry. Even Steve Rogers, the superhero icon of indomitable spirit and unending willpower, the man who "could do this all day" and would always tell the weight of the world that "No, you move.", still allowed himself moments where he'd put down the shield and let himself cry a little on the inside. Because even an Invictus human still had to be human, to not let themselves forget who they really were.

The problem is that whenever I deliberately throttled down Invictus by any margin, allowed myself to actually get in touch with my feelings again and be Taylor, then that meant my decision-making process would start incorporating a whole lot of biases, mistaken assumptions, and just plain emotional dumb stuff. Stuff that I was nowhere near as consciously aware of as I should have been. And heck, even in full Invictus I still wasn't perfect logic girl because by itself Invictus didn't make you any smarter, just much better focused.

I'd already done the tactical review of what errors I'd made to end up in here, but the more lengthy self-analysis that Psychology charge had started me on let me begin working out the why of how I'd made those errors, the mental traps I'd fallen into that had led me into those goofs in the first place. Because I certainly didn't want to keep repeating this kind of mess.

Now, a huge part of it was my revulsion and horror at what John remembered story-Taylor had become in the original 'Worm' serial. Because oh my God, knowing that you grow up to become the villain? Heck, to become The Villain? That you could spend fifteen years growing up with no other desire to become a superhero, try to be such a nice person that even the horrible betrayal of your best friend and your entire life becoming an emotional torture-fest still wouldn't drive you to lash back with violence because that would be wrong… and in just a couple years go from that starting point to becoming Skitter? And then Khepri? And that every individual step along the way would supposedly make perfect logical sense to you?

Yes, there was a reason that my memories prompting me as to how my once hero-worshipped icon Alexandria was actually just the hypocritical murderous fist of Cauldron had barely even been registering on my disappointment scale recently. I mean, sure, that was pretty bad too and I certainly wasn't going to cultivate her as a mentor any time before the second Tuesday of never, but Skitter was hardly in a position to throw any stones at her regarding lack of ethics.

Just… yikes! Just plain yikes! Lategame Skitter and Khepri were as far gone from the person I'd been, the person I'd always thought as I was, as Bonesaw had been twisted and broken from the original pre-trigger Riley! But Bonesaw was what happens when you take a six-year-old girl and then let Jack freaking Slash spend over half a decade breaking her piece by piece! I'd done it all to myself and in less than half her time! And at an age infinitely closer to adulthood than Riley had been! And without Jack Slash and his bullshit Communication shard!

My heel turn from innocent young woman to murderous warlord to freaking Lovecraftian Elder God had been all me. Only me. I had made those choices, I had pursued those goals, I had chosen to soak my hands in the blood of thousands of times of more people that had ever lived in the entire history of Earth-Bet. "Existential horror" might be a buzzword that was overused nowadays but that didn't mean that in at least some cases it wasn't legitimately fitting. And this was totally such a case.

Yes, I'd overreacted. Overreacted nothing, I'd gone straight into internally screaming denial.

Skitter focused on becoming a street level superheroine first and only and all the rest of her stuff was her reacting to stuff as it came? I'd completely avoid the street level period and stay in my house and work on long-range plans until I'd flowcharted exactly how I was going to get to the Endbringer fights before I'd even build my first set of tactical gear.

Skitter ignored her dad for months and eventually just discarded him entirely and ran away from home? I'd swing straight into being the totally dutiful daughter and let him make all the home and family decisions even when they obviously weren't the best idea, and only begin to disagree with him on the most vital no-compromise parts of my plans like not rushing straight into the Wards.

Skitter was the memetic Queen of Escalation, fearlessly leaping from challenge to challenge? I'd avoid conflict for as long as possible and stay as low-impact as I could when dealing with the ones I couldn't avoid!

Now, given my strategic situation some of these decisions had actually still been legitimately good choices. Which was part of why I'd made those decisions… and the decisions associated with them. Any idiot could avoid stepping on a land mine that was painted bright orange and lying in the middle of the sidewalk with a big red sign saying "DANGER: MINE FIELD". The one you stepped on was the one that you didn't see because it didn't look like a land mine.

Likewise with hanging yourself a plan that combined measures of competence and idiocy, but did so while lurking directly in a giant emotional blindspot of yours so you could only see the competence and not the idiocy. This is why for a viable long-term strategy you couldn't just make the right calls. That wasn't getting it right, that was just getting lucky, and luck always ran out eventually. You had both to make the right calls and make them for the right reasons.

Doing things out of a reflexive desire to not be like someone else you loathed was not wisdom, even when it worked. Mindlessly saying 'every day is opposite day!' regarding someone you hated was as bad an extreme as trying to mindlessly copy everything about someone you admired. Negative role models, just like positive ones, had to be approached with perspective.

And to be fair, even with all the mistakes I'd made Coil doing this had still been coming way out of left field. Moot point now, of course.

I had to stifle an urge to laugh when I suddenly realized that Coil's final "suggestion" to me had been about how I should be using this time for 'pondering and internalizing' because my 'life was undergoing great change', and that that was exactly what I'd just been doing. Just epically not in the way he would have wanted me to.

Hah!

So yes, these several hours of forced introspection I'd taken had hardly elevated me to perfect mental health and flawless objective reasoning, but I still felt a whole lot better having finally confronted at least some of my issues, pulled them out and rubbed my own nose in the stupidity of them, and resolved to do my best to avoid them in the future. Even if I was disappointingly certain that there were probably still emotional land mines in my head I hadn't discovered yet at least now I was going to be more on the lookout for them, and could hopefully in the future find them with hard work and foresight as opposed to slamming into them with my face. And I certainly knew several things that I would change about my plans once I got out of here.

Because I was going to get out of here.

Another realization I had to confront is that I'd been holding myself back on the Tinkertech. And not just in the sense of consciously choosing to not try building the superweapons yet, but in unconsciously blinding myself to entire categories of things I could have built.

Before his accident and injury and discharge Petty Officer John Mueller had been a US Navy nuclear power plant operator, a man trained to literally the single most rigorous standard of engineering safety and procedure that existed in the world. Someone whose approach to engineering was to place his faith only in processes that were completely understood, where the function of every component and the physical laws behind every interaction were known and computed out with precision, where everything made sense. The ideal of Department of Naval Reactors was to reduce their work to as close to a perfect deterministic framework as human minds and hands could achieve, a world where there were no surprises because all possible contingencies were computed ahead of time and a flowchart existed for every operation and for recovering from the anticipated potential failure modes of any of those operations. Where everything was understood, where nothing happened that hadn't already happened yesterday and would happen again tomorrow, and where achieving maximum boredom meant that all was well.

In fact, if you went with the definition that faith was belief even in the absence of evidence then DNR in general and John in particular would have faith in absolutely nothing and would always check the readings for themselves if possible. Heck, Admiral Rickover used to flunk officer candidates for the nuclear program if they took his word for it that the soup was unsalted instead of tasting for themselves before adding more. It was perhaps the only career field where the entrance psych screening showing high-functioning OCD would be considered a positive recommendation.

In other words, John was the absolute last person in the world who would even think about how bullshit Tinkertech could really get. Just as Skitter was my existential horror I could not mentally confront, a disorderly universe that ran on arbitrary bullshit instead of organized knowledge and reproducible results was his. And it was his memories and habits I'd been leaning on for my technological plans because he was the experienced technician and not me so that would make the best sense, right?

And heck, even my own cape geeking-out on PHO at its geekiest had avoided the Tinkertech discussion forum like it was covered in radioactive bees because they were in like year fifteen of the endless ongoing circular online argument of how this stuff was supposed to work and hadn't resolved a single issue yet. And I didn't just mean the shard-limitation of Tinkers not being able to walk other people through how to independently reproduce or maintain their gear, I meant the understanding of how the heck Tinkertech was supposed to be an actual technology, however eldritch, instead of just a bunch of Shakers who used scrap and fetishes as psychological crutches. Tinkers didn't agree on how that worked, Thinkers didn't agree on how that worked, non-capes didn't agree on how that worked, nobody did. Asking any two people in the world for their thoughts on how Tinkertech was 'supposed' to function would get you at least three answers.

I mean, the incident where Squealer had once made a mag-launch cannon out of a steel pipe and some ancillary scraps none of which actually contained any electrical power source or conductive rails, and yet was clearly a magnetic coilgun from the electromagnetic readings it had given off every time they'd tested it alone… now that I'd brought it to mind again I consulted my various Inspired Inventor-granted Tinker specialties as to how the heck that would even be possible and while I got back an answer it was nothing I could have explained in actual language because Squealer was still shard-limited even if I was not.

So if that's how I was avoiding the question, try to imagine how a man like him would be avoiding the question. In hindsight, even my initial choices of Tinkertech specialties had been informed by John's bias. I'd started from Mathematics and Physics because those were his twin gods. I'd maxed out Ruggedization and Safety Engineering early on because Department of Naval Reactors built to last and built even harder for double fail-safe. I'd stuck with actual gizmos that either 'made sense' by the point of view of a 'real-world' engineer or, like my creative pharmaceuticals, were in areas of John's relative ignorance so that I didn't subconsciously reject them as 'too creepy' because I didn't know any better.

Heck, John's own training and my major charge dump into Safety Engineering is why I'd kept my workshop in such a safe condition when not in use that there was nothing except the zap stick available to fight the Undersiders with, because I'd have had to spend time I didn't have getting things out of storage and taking the safety caps off. Inspired Inventor's ability to seamlessly integrate downloaded knowledge along with my existing knowledge and inform my reflexes and habits as well as my conscious mind was sometimes a two-edged sword, when it led to me developing habits like 'Safety first!' that I wasn't consciously taking into account. Because when walking through Indian country, sometimes you had to take the safety catch off first. And unless I was actually thinking about it, I wouldn't. This is part of why I preferred to meditate and ponder on new charges.

When the situation allowed me the luxury of doing so, that is. But right now it didn't, so needs must.

Swinging back to considering the ramifications of John's mental blind spots, I acknowledged to myself that of course my own pre-Trigger ignorance of technology and science was pretty much global outside of freshman high school level. So I had no or few biases on the topic at all, meaning that it was all John's biases that had been unconsciously informing and shaping my thought processes on Tinkering. Biases of his that I'd never seriously examined his memories for because I'd been a little busy dealing with all the other horrible revelations from in there, thank you.

Which is why I'd now been doing a lot of finally digging those biases up and rooting them out at the same time I'd been crunching my own. And now that I'd start to take the blinders off, this cell didn't look nearly as bare to me as it had a few hours ago.

Oh no, there were possibilities here. Not any easy ones, no, because Coil had been very thorough with taking the precautions necessary to confine your average young Tinker. For all of Thomas Calvert's personality flaws and his own blind spots, he was still an experienced professional at this and it showed.

But I may have been young and I may have been a Tinker but I was as far from average as it could possibly get. And thus, I got to work.

Salvaging, 1 charge.

I smiled thinly to myself as I lay on my futon, still pretending sleep. Right, let's add that alongside Adaptation and think on it a while and we'll see what we can do about turning scrap into miracles.

Communications Engineering, 2 charges.

I was still working out possible escape routes but given my condition, the odds, and that Coil's primary specialty above all else was paranoia bunkering, I already knew that fighting my way out solo would likely not be the route I'd end up choosing. And that meant either social engineering or getting out the SOS.

Social Interaction, 1 charge.

This was one charge I'd been reluctant to spend because like any other field of knowledge that wasn't closely related to stuff I already knew, the integration process was a little tougher. Also, the habits and reflexes from this one would be all about my day-to-day interactions with people, my social links to others, my me. If I hadn't been in a bind I'd probably never have gone this route and just tried to grow out of socially awkward Taylor organically and by actual meeting of people and doing of things, but right now I was locked in Coil's torture dungeon and that meant my personal feelings could take a number and get in line. Even if downtime from being in beast mode was still a good idea, having downtime also meant having uptime. And that meant right damn now.

So I concentrated on, of all people, Emma Barnes. My lifelong best friend, then my worst enemy. The person who just always seemed to be moving right, standing right, emoting right, and talking right without even having to consciously think about it. Who could effortlessly redirect a conversation so that whatever you said was wrong and whatever she said got the crowd laughing along with her even if it directly contradicted what she'd just said. Before spending that charge I had no idea what kind of word magic could possibly make people forget that they'd been calling you a whore who'd done the entire football team for bus fare literally the minute before and were now all laughing at you because you were an ugly virgin that even Greg Veder wouldn't be desperate enough to touch, but Emma had called that one Tuesday. Heck, that one had actually been the Tuesday before the Locker, in fact.

Heck, part of me was still afraid of learning these skills because I'd spent so much time learning how it could be used as a weapon for pain. Really misused. The idea that I'd develop a razor tongue like hers, one that I cold potentially unleash in a moment of pique and draw blood off some other girl like Emma had flayed… honestly, if it was a choice between that or having to wield the bees like Skitter, I'd probably take the bees. Emma's talent for social manipulation had been incredibly awesome to have on my side and the torments of Hell to have against me, and that more than anything left me painfully aware of how two-edged that particular sword could be.

But it was time for me to start growing up, and that meant not letting my experiences on the receiving end of weaponized social skills make me swear off their use any more than Dad's getting shot in the butt by a careless hunting partner who'd entirely forgotten Cooper's Third Rule way back when made him swear off having guns in the house or going hunting ever again.

So I allowed a practical working knowledge of the subject to flow into my mind, and concepts such as neuro-linguistic programming and conditioned social expectations flickered dimly on the edges of my mind in the interface between Social Interaction and Psychology as the practical bits flowed into my reflexes Things such as knowing how different types of eye contact could cause someone to have an entirely different reaction to the same words said in the same context. Or how a smile and a nod meant 'I'm friendly', a wink and a nod meant 'Just between us', but a smile and a wink and a nod meant 'Hang on to your wallet because I'm about to try and sell you a lemon'.

Huh, prana-bindu really speeds up the integration process there. Instead of having to laboriously work out what these lessons would do to change my posture and my unconscious gestures I'm… pretty much aware of all of it.

And while outright mind control via talking would sadly remain in the realm of fiction without actual shard bullshit being involved no matter how many charges I dumped into either this or prana-bindu because apparently human brains and their hearing centers just worked differently in the Dune setting, there was still a lot you could do on the mundane level to slightly futz with peoples' cognitive dissonances or biases if you knew them well and pitched yourself properly. A great deal of human social interaction was subliminal cues and gestalt, after all. This is why the glasses trick actually did work outside of comic books a majority of the time outside of very close family or friends; unless people were deliberately concentrating on trying to get past a disguise human facial recognition worked on subroutines that stopped matching once the first few obvious data points had matched, and wouldn't match at all if you threw a false positive or a big distracter into the mix early on.

The short version is, I could now actually talk to people on a level other than 'Fuck with me and mine and I will kill you' or 'Okay, dad!' Even if it was just at the 'really good high school' level… to be honest, I didn't want to go beyond that level for now. Suddenly having a miraculous improvement from 'teenaged girl' to 'Secretary Kissinger' levels of diplomancy overnight? Maybe if I'd been up against other opposition, but between Coil's paranoia and his making Tattletale keep reviewing the tapes on me there's just an actual chance they'd catch it.

Nope, I certainly need some but I'll have to advance it more slowly. As is, if I'm more composed and eloquent tomorrow then last night can easily be explained by 'People aren't at their best when kidnapped and chained to the wall'. In fact, if I worked it right I could make it look like I was subliminally coming around to the idea of being compliant, of adjusting to my situation…

Yes, that's what I'd do. Coil would be back in the morning, and I'd probe him then for more reactions and social-fu opportunities. Assuming he doesn't just entirely give up and kill me then at some point I'll actually have to be allowed to show my Tinker stuff. And even under the gun and with all the precautions in the world, that'd still be more chance to touch tools than I'd have now.

Besides, outside of 'thrashing around in my sleep' in just the right manner to twist the coaxial cable inside the chain and snap the interior wire without making it look obvious as to what I did, there wasn't much else I could do on the in-cell Tinkering front while I was still pretending to be asleep. Its not like even with my new outlook on Tinkering I'm going to be building an FM transmitter powerful enough to reach the Protectorate from in here. Stupid steel-reinforced concrete underground bunker with zero signal reception.

But I had to break that wire early on. Since Coil had already shown me his wall zapper once, I'd been able to see how the lights in the cell flickered when he hit the juice so from now on if he ever hit the juice again I could know it and fake it without having to actually suffer through it. Which will be useful when he uses it again, because I certainly don't want them checking the system for faults. But given how Coil had said that that wire was also a potential killswitch, I damn sure couldn't just leave it there untouched.

Okay, starting to get sleepy now. Still, even if it was mostly mental that was still a very productive few hours. Time to get some rest.

Good night, Coil. Sleep well. I'll hopefully kill you in the morning.

Spoiler: Author's Notes

Yeah, spoilered for length. Hopefully doing it there means less posts afterwards that clutters up less alert filters.

Along that line, as per the advice given me earlier re: 'don't over-engage and don't over-spoil', from now on I will be doing my best to not explain things until the story actually does. I say this in full knowledge that I'll probably fail and still spill shit because one of my bad habits is liking to talk and liking to answer questions and analyze things out loud and in-thread, and I keep doing it even when I try not to.

But like my Taylor would advise me were she able to do so, self-improvement is a process and not just a decision. :)

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

Check out my (on hiatus) Worm fanfic, A Ghost of a Chance!

My fanfics and Jumpchains are indexed at the start of my snippets thread.

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Threadmarks Interlude 2-A: Coil New

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#674

Interlude 2-A: Coil

"… I probably won't kill you in the morning." I finished as confidently as I could, then switched off the intercom and the video pickup and rubbed the bridge of my nose with my free hand, trying to massage away the tension. I'd seldom had a conversation I'd planned out that carefully go that far off my script and I was not at all enjoying the sensation. Taylor Hebert was a very frustrating young woman to deal with.

"If you meant to go all Princess Bride then the quote is actually-" Sarah began to cut in, and I looked back up and glared her into silence. Miss Hebert was not the only frustrating young woman I knew, but at least this one had already been suitably cowed.

"Any useful comments?" I said after maintaining just enough silence to leave her even more uneasy than she had been.

"We've struck a much tougher nut than you were anticipating, Boss," she told me obediently. "I don't know if its her Thinker specialty or just her but damn, Grue was living on the wrong side of the tracks even before he got into crime and Bitch is literally hardwired for animal aggression and even they don't give off the hardcore vibe that she was giving. That shutdown trick she has keeps me from reading any of her tells but I can still listen to the words she's saying and read what mood she wants to communicate to me and what she's saying is 'Never give up, never surrender'. And she kept it up even after you ran enough voltage through her to make Armsmaster ask for a time out. Where does daddy's little girl from the suburbs who won't even punch back at a bully suddenly get like that?"

"She does understand that if she doesn't eventually comply then she won't ever be leaving here alive, yes?" I inquired. "Or could we cure her obstinancy by curing her… short-sightedness?"

"Again, magic eight-ball says answer not clear, try again later," my Tattletale temporized hastily,"but she did understand the reality of the threat you made against her dad so I'm sure she understands that reality as well. Thing is, if she's that much of a realist then she'd already have started bargaining with you to at least get a better deal for her compliance. So my best guess right now is she's still hoping the PRT finds her before you get tired enough of her shit to end her." She winced and tried to hide her Thinker headache. Well, she had had a long day and it was precisely because of her inconvenient limitations that I was always on the lookout for another Thinker to supplement her talents.

"Good, that gives me an idea of what facts to emphasize in our next conversation. Very well, we're done for the day." I waited just long enough for her to feel a surge of relief before deliberately cutting in again to crush it. "Make sure you're well-rested before you're back here at 9am for another session. Even with the current obstacles there should still be time enough to finish with her before we miss our window, but that doesn't mean we should waste any."

Tattletale murmured something that could charitably be taken for an acknowledgement and headed out, one hand already going into her pocket for her bottle of pain pills-

"Wait," I said, and she came to a halt while slumping miserably. "Her 'shutdown trick'. How did she know what your power was, that she knew to block it?"

"Actually she was doing it before she even spoke to the intercom so its probably just a thing she does whenever she's awake. I mean, Regent's power didn't work on her so she was clearly doing her body control thing back then too. So, Thinkers are bullshit?" she finished weakly.

"A reasonable hypothesis," I allowed after a short pause. "Very well, go."

The door sealed behind her and I murmured an instruction to the staff to hold all my calls. I then sealed the office, started some contemplative music playing, and leaned back and began to review the entire Hebert situation from beginning to end, looking for things I'd overlooked or new angles I could possibly play.

Taylor Hebert had first come to my attention approximately eleven days ago when one of my men in the local PRT office had informed me that Director Piggot had requested a consultation from Watchdog, the PRT's internal Thinker tank primarily focused on anti-Thinker operations in the social and economic spheres. I had of course instructed all my agents in place that any communication between the Brockton Bay PRT office and Watchdog would be news of the highest priority, because if Director Piggot suspected anything of what my organization was really up to in the Bay or the true nature of my power then calling in Watchdog would be one of the logical moves.

I had been very relieved to find out that it had simply been a lowest-priority 'at your convenience' request to do a simple review-and-recommendation of a suspected young parahuman who was a possible Thinker. Relieved and then, when I reviewed the files in question, gratified at the new opportunity. Oh, the logistics of abducting and… converting… a young parahuman who was already the focus of PRT attention were not inconsiderable, but I could at least make a legitimate study of the problem before deciding whether to commit myself.

So I had contented myself with waiting and seeing for a week or so, and noted with interest the unusually expedited nature of the legal proceedings against young Miss Hebert's tormentors. It could simply have been a coincidence or an unusual moment of competence from the Brockton Bay police department, of course, but in combination with a probable Thinker in play? At that time I thought that young Taylor was just the sort of parahuman social engineer I'd been praying for.

When I'd first obtained her I'd originally had such hopes for my Tattletale, but she rapidly educated me in how her personality flaws and lack of vision were such that left to her own devices she'd have been doomed to stay in the gutter for her short and miserable life. Even now her inability to play any kind of long game or exercise genuine self-restraint highly limited the uses I could put her to. This is why I allowed her to waste her time playing games with the Undersiders and only called her in when I had an actual use for her talents; if I'd made her a full-time lieutenant and interacted with her on a regular basis she'd have driven me to murder within a month. It was a measure of how ultimately passive a set of personalities the Undersiders were that they hadn't.

At any rate, both Watchdog's inconclusive results and my own prompted me to greater curiosity. I had my men exercise closer surveillance of Taylor Hebert in a dropped timeline or two, but even then they could not precisely establish what her powers were or how she was using them. Simply from her sudden desire to change all aspects of her life – withdrawing from school into home study, drastic change in exercise patterns, entirely different social sphere, and suchlike – it was trivial to deduce that she'd triggered somehow. The first thing most new parahumans did was remake themselves, after all.

Indeed, if the PRT analyst assigned to monitoring her case had not been one of my men and thus quietly editing the PRT's own data as it came then even that dull-witted Piggot would have figured it out. Well, that and they weren't remotely willing to risk as close a surveillance as I could, thanks to my unique abilities.

So after carefully working out a scheme to blind and divert the PRT from the truth I gave the orders for her kidnap, and was as shocked as any of my men to suddenly discover that we'd all misevaluated her case the entire time. From the weapons she used to subdue the pair of my mercenaries who'd tried to take her on the street she clearly was not a Thinker but a Tinker, and in hindsight all of her mysterious activity patterns and purchases that seemed to be aimless instead fit neatly into the event model of a young Tinker of above-average intelligence who knew at least something of the PRT's datamining systems looking for people like them and was deliberately evading them.

I dropped the timeline where the attempt was made and refined my plans further, because this was both obstacle and opportunity. Opportunity because despite this meaning my hopes for another Thinker were dashed I still had a very important potential use for a young Tinker in her position; several, in fact. Obstacle in that the nature of the Tinker Cycle meant that I could not afford to give her any significant amount of time to keep building and preparing. She was already a formidable target to kidnap as is. I had no opportunity to be as thorough and cautious as I might otherwise be. Either I made the attempt within the next week or I might as well not make it at all.

Therefore, I seized the day and sent the Undersiders - or at least those members who wouldn't entirely botch a mission requiring stealth and discretion. Even a single Tinker in her lair would not be expected to overcome an entire team of parahumans, not if caught early enough in the Tinker Cycle. Particularly since Tattletale's observations of her father had turned up the welcoming news that his own prejudices had led him to forbid his daughter from installing any serious defenses upon their house. While she'd still have her hand weapons and martial arts training that she'd showed during the attempted street kidnapping they were largely relying upon their residential alarm service and the heightened response time of being on the PRT watchlist as their primary home defense. Since defeating that was as simple as using the user access code for the alarm system I set Tattletale to the task of gathering it. After she did so I set up the necessary timelines, gave the go order, and made sure to supply them with specialized weapons and drugs to augment the Undersiders' abilities just in case.

A simple deception on the part of Miss Livsey, who was nowhere near as courageous about defying me as she kept trying to tell herself she was whenever not actually in my presence, and the Undersiders were unaware of the violation of the 'unwritten rules' until it was too late for them to back out. Of the three who hadn't known beforehand I knew that Grue would raise objections after the fact and posture and shout but he would, as he always did, eventually resign himself to the inevitable. It's not as if he had anywhere else he could go after all. Tattletale could easily tell him that trying to turn me into the PRT would be suicidal for him, and his sister kept him chained to Brockton Bay and thus to me. Regent would of course be apathetic, and Bitch even more indifferent.

And all of them would know that they were now more tightly bound to me, because they certainly could never let this become publicly known. Should this blow up then it would be the Undersiders who would take the fall and suffer the wrath of all the other gangs in town for violating 'the rules', as it would be their word against mine that I was even involved at all. They'd been the only ones on record as ever interacting with Taylor Hebert at any time outside of my lair, after all. Every other interaction between her and my men had been in dropped timelines.

So, despite the bumps in the road I had eventually succeeded in abducting the young Miss Hebert and looked forward with gleeful anticipation to shattering her childlike faith in heroes and the PRT and taking advantage of that simmering anger, that buried resentment, that I knew had to be there. The background checks and the PRT's internal investigation into the Shadow Stalker affair had been some of the most entertaining reading I'd had in years. How could anyone suffer such indignities and oppression, be systematically let down on every level by all the adults and institutions that children were naively taught to trust to protect them, and not come out the other end as perfect villain material? How could anyone bottle up that much rage and suffering and not have it erupt like a volcano when finally given the right outlet?

A young woman with one of the most sought-after categories of parahuman ability, a Tinker. A young woman with the clean record of the 'suburban daddy's girl' that Sarah had mocked her for being. A young woman who had shown enough capacity for fear to be intimidated into silence by her bullies but simultaneously had shown enough resolve and self-restraint after her triggering to not be unsuitable in the same manner that Miss Livsey was. And one who had been repeatedly and savagely victimized by the PRT's negligence and the hand of a Brockton Bay Ward without having known it.

Someone who would know not to challenge me, but by the same token could with just the right stimulus be turned into a monster. A patient, calculating monster with an unquenchable hatred for the PRT and all its works hidden behind the mask of a quiet, rule-abiding, obedient girl. A mole for me to co-opt and send within the Brockton Bay Wards… and in the fullness of time, the Protectorate itself. A level of potential access well above even the agents and analysts and administrators I'd already subverted. An agent in place who could bond with and sound out her teammates as yet more possible recruitment prospects by day and still augment my operations covertly with her Tinkertech by night.

Oh, she would have been perfect.

And then she goes and ruins it all by already knowing that Shadow Stalker was her tormentor all along and not even caring! What was wrong with that girl?!

Now, I had of course been conducting initial approaches to Taylor in two separate timelines simultaneously, given the value of first impressions. In this one, the one I'd kept, I'd put her in the cell and opened with threats. In the other I'd had her wake up in more gracious surroundings and tried charm. I had at first thought that charm was working, especially given her alternate's delightful reaction to my dropping the Shadow Stalker reveal…

… until her comment in the other timeline revealed that she had known that all along, meaning that the timeline where Taylor was responding to my honey-coated recruitment pitch was obviously an attempt to feign compliance until she could escape. And her body-control ability had kept Tattletale from knowing she was lying. So, after murdering both of those very disappointing young women as a minor self-indulgence I dropped that timeline and committed to this line of attack.

The remainder of the interrogation was frustratingly free of immediate results as well but at least reassured me that for all her native intelligence and will, Miss Hebert was still ignorant of the true realities of her situation and not at all experienced at dealing with men like me. Her death threat to me about her father only revealed the depth of her commitment to him and his usefulness as a lever. And despite her knowledge of the truth about the PRT already she still seemed as if she did not care for them at all, and there were those hints of resentment against authority…

Ah, that was likely it. She would have to come to see me as her dominant figure to be obeyed without perceiving me as a conventional authority figure to be rebelled against. A difficult psychological balance to strike, but if my investigations and my probings could turn up anything she wanted badly enough…

Admittedly, given that she'd already rejected a straightforward offer of resources and riches in the alternate timeline then I would need more research to find her more esoteric desire, but I knew she had one. Everyone wanted something. That was the way of the world.

I picked up the phone and dialed an internal extension.

"What is the progress on the Hebert diversion?"

"We made contact with the father," one of my squad leaders answered. "He's been told exactly what story to give to the police and exactly what will happen to his daughter and then him if he tries to play it any other way."

"His reaction?" I inquired.

"For a minute there I thought he was going to have a stroke. Or try to punch me out. But he was just pissed, not stupid. Once he took a deep breath he got the message, that you'll have her dead and mulched in a sewer the instant the word 'kidnapping' goes out on any police wires. And then sometime after that he has a date with a runaway garbage truck and he'll never know when or where."

"And he understands clearly that he is supposed to wait 24 hours before making the call about his 'runaway' daughter? And that it must go to the police, not to the PRT? Because it would not be disastrous if he disobeyed us on that, but it would be very inconvenient."

"I told him that twice, sir. I even used one syllable words. He got it."

"Do you think he needs a reminder package? A finger, perhaps?"

"I think that would probably push him over the edge into the stupid zone, not make him back down. Guy's a union steward in Brockton Bay, after all. That's not a job for timid souls."

"I see. Very well, we continue with plan A for now. Out."

I hung up the phone and sat back, finally beginning to relax. Yes, despite the bumps in this road this situation was still well within acceptable parameters. I might even still get my best-case scenario of an agent in place among the Wards if Miss Hebert could see the light quickly enough. Failing that, well, no Tinker was ever useless. Even that drugged-up Merchant whore or that ridiculous boy on his flying skateboard were still at least adequate force multipliers for their respective factions, and Miss Hebert had tantalizing hints of a potential beyond either of theirs…

Yes, everything would work out in the end. It always did.

Author's Note: And here we have the Coil interlude promised earlier, that explains at least most of what he was thinking and why. As a 'what has gone before' piece its of necessity also introspective, but you do see him moving at least some new pieces around the game board by the end of it. And Coil is the sort of guy who conducts frequent process reviews on himself anyway.

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

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cliffc999

cliffc999

Jul 10, 2019

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#745

Orientation 2.3

They actually brought me breakfast the next morning, as well as picking up my soil bucket and giving me a fresh one without needing to be prompted. Breakfast was a pair of egg sandwiches wrapped in a paper towel and some bottled water. No tray, no plate, no utensils. The guards stood safely behind the line and tossed me my food, keeping their eyes on me the whole time I ate. So, anti-Tinker paranoia and/or hard sell still in effect until further notice. At least I got a look at what was outside the door when they opened it, even if 'it's a hallway' wasn't exactly the keys to the base.

None of the guards were stupid enough to wear watches or anything else that would interfere with the whole 'disorient the prisoner by screwing with their sense of time' protocol that was standard for this type of prisoner-brainwashing experience, but I was adept enough to be able to be tuned into my body's circadian rhythm with far more precision than most people. So I knew that it was somewhere between 9 and 10am when the door opened again, and I had to concentrate to keep my face expressionless and my tells absolutely shut down as I was confronted by the surprising visage of Tattletale entering my cell. Alone.

"Remember, do not cross the yellow line," the speaker blared as she shut the door behind her. Since I was already studying her as closely as I could I actually caught her momentary grimace of frustration as the guy in the security control room did his interrupt.

And here I thought something weird was happening for a moment. Nope, looks like its just another lame 'come to the Dark Side' attempt.

"I'm sorry, did your forgetting to read the observer in on the script beforehand step on your plan? What was it, to pretend that you were sneaking behind your boss' back to try and become my friend because…?" I elegantly chided her while doing my finest Emma impression, both wrongfooting her and tempting her to fill the silence I'd just left as quickly as she could to try and get some momentum back. Because I'm pretty sure that if there's one thing 'Lisa Wilbourn' wasn't used to it was a conversation that started with someone else stepping on her opening line.

Sure enough, she leapt at the chance to try and put me in my place. "Don't break your arm patting yourself on the back about how clever you are, Princess." Wait, what? Tattletale said this? Tattletale said this? Okay, I'm pretty sure deserved a Presidential Medal of Freedom just for keeping my face straight through that one. "If you want us to give you the soft sell then you have to give us something. Because no one is coming for you, so you can either deal or you can stay in this cell until the boss gets tired of feeding you."

"Let me guess," I said with aristocratic disdain, but not so much of it that it would be too incongruous with what they'd seen of me so far. Just enough to put 'Lisa's' hackles up with subconscious memories of the sort of 'Very Popular' high school girls that, if she'd gone through anything remotely resembling a North American secondary educational experience anywhere, she had to have met at least some of and loathed. "You threatened my father that if he called the police, you'd just kill me."

"Oh no, we told him to call the police," she shot back at me immediately, grinning smugly. "24 hours from now, long enough for you to be officially a runaway. Because that's what you are now, you little runaway. The team that hit your house-"

Is she seriously forgetting that I heard her talk during the home invasion, even if I didn't actually see her before they dropped me? How much sleep has she been getting recently?

… wait a minute, they're going to let an official police report on my 'running away' be entered into the system? The amount of effort it took for me to avoid jawdropping at Tattletale's incredibly hypocritical insult earlier suddenly seemed as light as a feather next to the mountain of my trying not to laugh hysterically at the thought of what Dragon would realize the instant that my name tripped one of her law enforcement searchbots. Oh, tick tock you assholes!

After that revelation I actually had to remind myself I was still in the middle of a conversation, and forcibly dragged my attention back to what Tattletale was saying:

"- and made sure to take your clothes and things from your room. Heck, we'd have left your dad all by himself to think you'd really run away if we didn't like to make extra sure he made the right call." She continued on with an undertone of regret that may actually have been genuine. "Because that's what you've got to understand about the boss. About Coil. He always makes extra sure."

"So the PRT won't be looking for a kidnap victim in Brockton Bay because they'll think I've voluntarily hit the road," I replied flatly. "I'm assuming there's all sorts of bread crumbs you left for them to find?"

"Something like that," Tattletale replied more assuredly, my stepping back a bit reassuring her she'd regained control of the conversation and, if she'd picked up on it, my moment of distraction possibly making her think that I'd been legitimately shocked by the realization she'd just dropped. Which was true, from a certain point of view, but ponder later she's still talking.

"But now that you've heard about that part let me skip to the good part, okay?" she continued. "This isn't the ABB slavery farm, and our plan isn't going to be to keep you drugged up and thinking only of your next fix and your next job. This isn't that kind of place."

I'm sure Dinah Alcott would be begging to differ, bitch. Assuming that there was the slightest chance this place would survive for that long. "What kind of place is it?" I said with polite attention, the sort that neither promised nor rejected.

She grinned in relief, probably that she'd finally gotten back to the script she'd intended to read from. "The boss might have come on really harsh in the beginning but you've got to understand, he's in a position where he can't afford to take any chances. Like you pointed out to him last night, the law catches up to what he's doing and it gets really uncomfortable and yes, the law is an ass and more on that later. But the important thing is that if you are on the boss' side then he's a real equivalent exchange sort of guy, you know? You help him, he helps you. Like my teammate, Grue? His sister's in a bad situation, abusive home, system doesn't care. Part of his payoff is the boss helping with that. Or my other teammate you haven't met yet, she's sort of a special needs person and also runs an animal shelter. Couldn't get any legal help for that even with-"

"I think I understand, thank you." I said politely. Really, that was the pitch they'd spent all night composing for me? They seriously expect me to cry for the sob stories of the poor downtrodden Undersiders, the people whose sole interaction with me to date was them breaking into my house and assaulting me and almost killing me? Either Lisa's epically blowing her lines here or else the best effort of Coil's scriptwriting team is… wow, how many plans of theirs have I already wrecked if they're scraping the bottom of the barrel this desperately? At any rate, I had to shut her up before she kept killing the gag so thoroughly that no one would believe me pretending to believe it, so I continued on.

"But in the department of inconvenient truths, I must point out that the outstanding legal and social difficulties in my life were already solved right before you got here. So what was Coil thinking he could assist me with, exactly?"

"Do you think you got screwed by Shadow Stalker?" she shot back at me, crouching down to stare me in the eyes – from a safe distance behind the yellow line, of course. "No, you got screwed by a system. A system that promises to care for you, to protect you, but doesn't really care how many people like you get chewed up and spit out so long as the guys on stop stay there."

I lifted one eyebrow Spock-fashion and said nothing.

"Do you really think somebody like Alexandria got to where she is by being a good girl and drinking her milk and following all the rules?" Tattletale continued, trying hard to hit me up for a reaction. "Or even by being able to fly and throw tanks?"

I guess that really is going to be their play, then. Okay, I can work with that.

"To be honest, I believe that Alexandria got to the top by combining a truly excellent PR machine with a talent for backstabbing office politics backed by a ruthless ambition worthy of a six-term Senator," I replied matter-of-factly after a precisely measured pause. "But please note that an apparent devotion to the rules is extremely useful, because if its commonly believed that you are an icon of following them then very few people bother to investigate if you really are following them. If I learned anything from my bullies, then I learned that." I finished with quiet triumph.

"So you actually do live in the real world," she immediately shot back with apparent relief. "Because if you couldn't then the boss and you would have serious problems communicating and that would have just gone nowhere good for anyone. But if you can do that, then why can't you meet us halfway?"

"Because nobody's asked me," I replied archedly. "They've kidnapped me, threatened me, shot me, tasered me, et cetera, and then there was the whole threats and bragging session last night... but none of that really qualified as a proper dialogue, do you think?"

Tattletale grinned at me like a shark. "So… purely for hypothetical purposes, what would you say could qualify as one?"

As with all diplomatic summits, in the end it devolved down to two people repeating their negotiating positions at each other in politer and politer words and with smaller and smaller changes each time until somebody finally needed a lunch break. Tattletale thanked me for my preliminary cooperation and promised that she'd do her best to advise Coil towards leniency. Sure, and that and a dollar would get me a can of Coke. At Tattletale's word the guards also "graciously" unlocked my manacle and gave me free reign of the cell, even if I was required to be standing against the far wall at any time the door was opened.

So, now we've entered the start-giving-her-enough-rope-to-hang-herself phase, hrm? Apparently, Coil was really eager in me agreeing to comply but by the same token paranoically unwilling to believe any promise of mine that I actually would. Apparently not having his pet lie detector actually work on me was spooking him quite a bit, and I could hardly suddenly start pretending to be readable now. That would just paint a big yellow "SHE'S PLAYING YOU" on my forehead.

The news that within 24 hours they would completely screw any hope of keeping my abduction from being noted as an abduction by the PRT and all points associated was a great relief to me, of course. But like with many great gifts it also carried a great test, because as soon as Coil knew that the plan was blown I had to be at the very least in a position where I could fort up and avoid being killed long enough for the cavalry to reach me, if not already be out of this fucking base. So while his life was on a countdown clock, in a way so was mine.

24 hours from my abduction would be… okay, allowing a couple hours for them to get to my dad afterwards, then let's call it midnight tonight. So assume that that's how long I had before Dragon would start noticing. Since she does not know that Coil has the Brockton Bay PRT office infiltrated left right and center, about fifteen minutes after she first calls Armsmaster Coil will know he's blown. I don't know exactly what he'll do to me then but I certainly don't want to wait in here and find out.

Right, so we needed something that could turn my cell into a barricaded stand-off, something that could punch a detectable signal out of here, if possible some personal defense options in case plan A goes to shit, and definitely a little gizmo I had in mind for the last-ditch Plan We're Screwed.

Tactics – 1 charge.

Also that, because Strategy is a bit of a different focus than what I needed right now. I should have done that last night, but nobody's perfect. I was actually comforted by the knowledge of Tactics flooding in and reassuring me that I'd already gotten the essentials down, although there were certainly refinements and contingencies I could add to the outline I'd already sketched.

Now, the security systems were a definite problem. I certainly couldn't do anything in this cell besides sit, stand, or sleep as long as those cameras were functioning.

And that's why I almost choked to death on my lunch.

Amateurs would have done a bunch of dramatic hacking and coughing and flailing around because that's how it looks on TV. I had enough knowledge to qualify for a medical degree and I knew perfectly well that real choking meant complete obstruction of the airway and that meant no signs beyond clutching at the throat, maybe some high-pitched wheezing, turning blue in the face, and then collapsing. So that's exactly what I did.

The thing about no-bullshit for-real choking on food is, of course, that if you don't take action immediately then the victim is dead. No time to call for instructions or laboriously haul me down to the clinic. Four minutes without oxygen to the brain and kaput. So somebody in this room had to assist me right now if they didn't want Coil to lose his prize. But whenever I was eating two of the guards stayed in the room to watch me the whole time, remember?

I gleefully noted Lefty calling away the medical emergency in his progress on his collar mike. That told me that however isolated from the outside the Endbringer shelter was by its construction there were signal repeaters inside the shelter for the use of Coil's internal communications. Righty of course was the guy who got to unfasten and drop his gunbelt – good training there – and charge into within arm's reach of me, get behind me, and commence the Heimlich maneuver. Pump once, pump twice, and I spat out the chunk of roast beef I'd carefully been saving under my tongue as 'stuck in my throat' and used my body control to restart my breathing. Crisis averted.

No, I didn't try to pick Righty's pocket for his cell phone or his radio. If they weren't deliberately watching for that then they were far too stupid to work here. What I did do was stay pale and sweaty and keep my pulse rate a little irregular. I was relying on Coil's own thoroughness and elaborate precautions. Many other captors would simply go 'crisis averted' after the choking incident and resume normal procedure. But as I recalled from the story Coil kept an on-staff registered nurse, and his procedures would almost certainly require an all-clear from that R.N. after any medical incident with a prisoner before they'd let themselves relax.

Sure enough, in less than two minutes a small unassuming man marched with a medical bag, opened it up, and listened to my heart and breathing with a stethoscope. Then he moved the stethoscope and listened again, looking more worried.

"How many electrical shocks has she had?" he asked the guards.

"A single level one, late last night." the guard replied.

"The Undersiders also tased me when capturing me," I broke in. "Some kind of custom taser, Regent used it-" I stopped and wheezed a little more. "Maybe for a minute?"

"Oh those idiots!" he swore viciously.

"Mr. Pitter?" one of the guards asked worriedly.

"Restraint/transport protocols stat," Pitter snapped back, then stepped out of the way and continued talking as they began to move. "I do not like how her pulse is fluttering. I think the brain oxygen disruption from her choking plus residual weakness from all that shocking last night might be putting her into arrhythmia. We're moving her to the facility clinic, this will need an immediate EKG to make sure and possibly a drug regimen to avoid us being stuck with a hospital case."

"Yes sir!" they snapped as they finished the process of trussing me up and hustling me out of the cell, their stolid patience having been replaced by that unique blend of compressed panic and mechanical efficiency you found only in combat veterans.

I stayed passive during the trip to the medical center. This was not going to be the scene where I heroically kung-fu'ed all my guards and ran to freedom right away. Not when I didn't have the slightest idea where I was going, how far I'd have to go to get there, how many guards were between me and the exit, and I was currently simulating a mild cardiac event by deliberately screwing with my own heartbeat.

But I was obsessively memorizing every single detail I could perceive about the route. This far down the hallway. That turn. That security checkpoint. Those cameras. Count and memorize the faces in the hallways. Dressed like guards. Dressed like a technician. Hrm, those are dressed like laborers and have muddy boots. Construction currently taking place? Possible escape route down as well as up? Note for later.

Arriving at medical center. Concentrate on Pittman's body language. I want him concerned but not panicked. I started to increase pulse rate dangerously, leaving behind arrhythmia for outright tachycardia.

As the guards put me on the bed Pitter swiftly slipped the cuff of a blood pressure machine/heartbeat monitor onto my arm. A hurried beeping filled the room.

"Pulse is 95 and rising, BP is dropping," Pitter said urgently, looking at the readout. "Not good!" He yanked open the front of my inmate pajamas and started frantically sticking EKG electrodes onto my chest and then clipping the leads. The instant he looked at the pattern coming up on the screen he swore even more viciously.

"That's v-tach! Get the paddles! All right, CLEAR!"

I deliberately let go of all my body controls and rode the shock.

"CLEAR!"

One more zap.

The frantic beeping of the pulse readout stopped, steadied, and slowed. I closed my eyes, smiling contentedly to myself.

"… thank God, she's stable. Somebody go call Mr. Coil and tell him that those clumsy ham-fisted brats he calls a parahuman strike team botched the job last night so hard that his prize subject almost clocked out right on this table. Then tell him that if he had any physical program scheduled for her, it just got set back for at least 48 hours of stress-free observation. I've got to stay here and get her IV started."

"Yes sir, Mr. Pitter."

I first checked the ceiling of the room to make sure that, yup, there was no closed-circuit TV cameras in the actual medical clinic. It was intended as much for the use of the inhabitants of the base as by prisoners, so whenever a prisoner temporarily had to be treated they apparently just used live guards. But by the time the guard sent off on messenger duty returned I'd had enough moments both when Pitter was out of the room fetching the required medications from the pharmaceutical storage and the remaining guard's eyes were on the door instead of on me to successfully swipe a mechanical pen, several spare instrument probes and leads, two syringes, and a digital thermometer.

Jackpot.

Computer Hacking, 1 charge. Sleight of Hand, 1 charge.

By dinner time, I'd assimilated the two new charges – one of them already having massive synergy with my 3 charges in Computer Programming and my 2 charges in Communications Engineer - and managed to finish my first jury-rigged device working by touch underneath my blanket. Now that I'd embraced the limit Shaker effects of a Tinker in Tinkering mode, the ones that let bare hands improbably substitute for what would normally take precision manufacturing processes, things such as 'turning the probe and lead into an improvised antenna, a syringe's internal workings into a volume slider, and rewiring the digital thermometer into a crude signal modulator' were possible. Things that would let me find and tap into the wi-fi frequency for the bases internal comm repeaters.

At that point it merely became a long, long, long and tedious session of reading signal packets by streaming code directly to the thermometer readout and having them displayed as on the screen, with the task made doubly difficult that I had to keep the guard at the door from seeing the thermometer. They were thankfully relaxing their diligence enough to figure that a cardiac patient whose ankles were handcuffed to the bed was not likely to go anywhere, especially given that she was (by all appearances) lolling and semiconscious from the various doses that Nurse Pitter had set up in my IV drip. So if I held it down low on the other side of the bed with my head cocked to one side, that was just me being 'sick' and 'drugged'.

But honestly, have you ever tried to work with and then encode a binary signal by hand, working through the limited display throughput of a four-character digital display? Even after some chicken-scratching on the bare circuit board let me rewire the display for hexadecimal instead of binary, it was still the work of over an hour to pull off a hack that I could have done in less than one minute with an actual cell phone or tablet.

Still, computer security never changes. Build your impregnable fortress of doom, staff it with elite mercenaries, layer it in multiple thicknesses of elaborate Bond villain security death systems… and the lowest intern on the IT staff will still be the one who sets up the 'routine' stuff, and they'll still have the wireless router using "Admin" for its login and default password. A classic PEBKAC error. Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair.

And once I had the router, I glitched out half of the signal repeaters for this floor by deleting the MAC addresses of their transmitters from the router's authorized hardware list and happily anticipated the eventual arrival of the servicemen who'd curse and swear and try to figure out exactly where everything had gone wrong. Because examining the hardware itself for faults would be futility incarnate, with them trying to troubleshoot the wrong thing. I then sent a false impulse to one to one of the fire alarms on this floor, and used the minute of distraction for the guard to hurriedly disassemble all my gizmos and stuff them back where I'd gotten them from. The only thing I couldn't restore to ideal condition in time was the digital thermometer and I handled that by simply yanking out the battery and tossing it in the garbage. They'd just go get the other thermometer rather than walk all the way to get a new pack of batteries.

Sure enough, when Coil finally arrived – Thomas Calvert still had his day job to attend to, I see – one of the first things he'd done is order an inventory and inspection of the clinic. I commend your paranoia, Thomas, but since I actually know about the depths of it thanks to spoilers you don't know I have, I can work around it. He had a long discussion with Mr. Pitter in the adjacent room that he didn't think I could overhear, but apparently the theories that the human senses had extraordinary capacities that most people ignored but could be retrieved under hypnosis were actually true. And, of course, with prana-bindu I didn't need hypnosis.

So, I eavesdropped on their next-door conversation about the possibility that I'd used my body control to fake my distress – which is exactly what I had done, to be fair – but since I hadn't done anything with my opportunity, what could they do?

Despite the arguments of Mr. Pitter regarding my health, Coil overrode him and demanded that I be immediately returned to my cell to finish my 48 hours' observation there, EKGs or no EKGs. He then swore when one of the guards informed him that the signal repeater failures on this floor meant that the cameras in my cell were several of the devices affected by the internal outages. And its not like they had multiple cells around here that had been laboriously swept clean for potential Tinker parts. And Coil sucked at improvising.

So eventually he landed on the solution I figured he'd land on – move me back in there anyway and bluff that the cameras were still on. Its not like I'd been fingered as the cause of the service outages, particularly not since I'd patterned them to look exactly like fallout from the construction apparently going on in the lower levels, and even Coil's paranoia was merely obsessiveness and not actually precognition.

Well, technically he did have precognition but he must have thankfully been using his splits today to manage things like my dad, and possible police response, and whatever holding pattern and disinformation his PRT moles would be setting up. Or quite possibly some other scheme entirely. I was a major project of Coil's but not the center of his life, after all. Since I had no way of knowing what he or I was doing in alternate timelines, I'd had to take a gamble here. But if I didn't take a gamble today then tomorrow would really suck, so that was that.

But the practical upshot is, when I was returned to my cell circa 7pm that evening I was in a space where the cameras were completely down, they knew the cameras were completely down, but they didn't know that I knew that the cameras were completely down.

And this time I had managed to pickpocket someone's cell phone with my newfound sleight of hand expertise. Mr. Pitter's, when he'd bent over me in the clinic the last time to get the EKG leads off and my IV out. Because he'd been on his feet all day and would either remain here in the bunker where he didn't need his cell phone at all or go right home and sleep. And by the time he woke up it'd be past midnight. So, very minimal danger he'd notice it missing.

Right. I spent most of the day doing social and medical engineering - and faking my almost-death - to buy me this one chance, but I've finally got it. It's 5 hours to H-hour, I've got a cell phone, a bare concrete cell with inactive cameras, guards who think I'm too sick and weak to possibly run or fight, and no sunglasses.

Let's hit it.

Author's Note: OK, I suddenly just got a tailwind out of nowhere so this chapter came out several days before I thought I'd get it done. But buildup is one thing, and we need to make sure after this kind of buildup the climax is worthy of it. So, probably going to do a couple rewrites on the next chapter before I launch it.

Spoiler: Commentaries

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

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Jul 10, 2019

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Threadmarks Interlude 2-B: Coil New

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Jul 11, 2019

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Interlude 2-B: Coil

The morning after Taylor Hebert's kidnapping required me to do the thing that I absolutely despised doing the most. Specifically, I had to improvise.

I had, in an admittedly rare moment of error, underestimated Grue's resistance to recent developments. I had expected any rebellion over the Hebert kidnapping to crystallize around Tattletale, which is precisely why I'd required so much of her time at my main facility to help with Taylor's interrogation and conversion. If she was with me helping analyze the prisoner then she was not with the Undersiders at their hideout trying to scheme some pathetic little scheme for getting out from under the new level of seriousness that the Undersiders would have to accept in their lives. The fact that even with Taylor's body control hampering her usefulness Tattletale's powers still had at least some utility only made such an action even more efficient and thus optimal.

And even if Lisa could not easily penetrate Taylor's secrets she did come in very handy for doing a little miscellaneous housecleaning while she was here. As annoying as she was, I should have been inviting her to the base slightly more often.

But concerning Grue, Tattletale's enforced absence from the Undersiders' decision-making process during a moment of crisis had left young Mr. Laborn in sole possession of the floor. And according to the listening devices I'd had emplaced in the Undersiders' residence he was using that window of opportunity to try and persuade the other two to help him abduct his sister and abscond with him to another city far from Brockton Bay, leaving Tattletale behind and maintaining their lifestyle as freelancers elsewhere. Apparently he'd been minimally intelligent enough to finally figure out that Lisa's first loyalty had been to me and not to their team all along.

Of course his two remaining teammates had hardly leapt immediately to his call, but their respective… emotional limitations meant that expecting Alec or Rachel's loyalty to stand fast indefinitely in the face of Grue's appeal to cowardice and selfishness was a foolish idea. If Grue were given too long enough to work on them unopposed, it was entirely too likely they would eventually agree with him. And while part of me was curious as to wait and find out how Grue could possibly delude himself into believing he could escape my wrath even if he fled across the continent, I knew I could not afford the luxury. As a practical matter I could not allow any such rebellious sentiment to gain any serious momentum. Not at any time, and certainly not now.

So I concocted a variant of my planned morning session with Taylor that would leave Tattletale as the primary interlocutor as opposed to the secondary and hurried - with suitable backup along, of course - to have a face-to-face conversation with the remainder of my wayward charges that would make it unambiguously clear their only hope of escaping this situation intact would be to stay the course. That particular confrontation proved troublesome enough that I had had to split and drop several timelines before I had put things into a satisfactory holding pattern. The dropped timeline where Grue had gone entirely berserk at my naked threat against his sister and the resulting scuffle to put him down ended up luring in one of Rachel's dogs had come far too close to killing me and certainly couldn't be dropped fast enough. In the future, I would remember to stick more indirect threats and pressure.

But after wasting far more time than I would have wanted resolving it, I returned to base to find out that I had apparently not punished them enough. Apparently the custom-built weaponry I'd provided them with had been so appallingly misused that it had led to Taylor's having a cardiac episode when her system had been separately stressed by her choking on her lunch.

Something about that whole scenario felt a trifle contrived to me, but Tattletale's report that our expectations of the night before concerning Taylor had been confirmed by her morning session contradicted any event model where Taylor would still be making active escape attempts. Both Tattletale's admittedly limited insights and my own knowledge of human nature had agreed that if Taylor Hebert had any amount of the… realistic perspective… that it would take for her to be a useful asset at all, she would begin attempts to bargain as soon as it was made plain to her that waiting for rescue was an option of impracticably low odds. Tattletale had so made it plain, and Taylor had immediately responded exactly as predicted.

And the fact that the construction crews working in the lower level had apparently knocked something out of alignment on part of the internal network and the technicians were still busy trying to trace intermittent faults and plot outages was another complication, especially given that it was interfering with the monitoring systems in Taylor's cell. Another data point against the scenario of her cooperating, to be weighted against all the data points accumulating in favor.

So I had her placed back in the special cell anyway, bluffing her with the inactive cameras, and resolved to wait another day and see what her actions would develop. Without enough data to base a firm decision on either way this would be the most reasonable course of action. Furthermore it would buy my men time to prepare another cell with the specialized precautions necessary to contain an uncooperative Tinker, one where the monitoring systems still worked, and that project should be finished by tomorrow morning.

Having thus wrapped up the day's work, I allowed myself the luxury of relaxation and sleep in the lavish comforts of my own home in one timeline, and remained here in my working suite to continue monitoring the situation in the other. Shortly before fatigue would have required my instance in the bunker to join my at-home instance in sleep, I received a Most Urgent priority call. It was Creep, the one minion of mine allowed to know my identity with my mask off due to the absolute necessity for it in his duties. My aide and my primary body double.

"What?" I asked him brusquely. His voice was full of tension as he replied.

"Sir, one of our moles in the PRT just red-flagged an utmost emergency. They had to risk breaking cover to communicate-"

I did not break in with some officious posturing such as 'This had better be good!'. My men already knew the penalties of taking stupid risks or even stupider wastes of my time. However, I could remind Creep to get to the point.

"Their information?"

"Director Piggot has personally ordered the arrest of Thomas Calvert under black protocols. She's just sent Armsmaster and Miss Militia to your house with enough Tinkertech to ensure stealthy entry and immediate incapacitation. Their orders are to absolutely not allow you any opportunity to regain consciousness before taking you but to ensure that you are taken alive."

What?

As one of my absolute worst-case scenarios came true, I frantically parsed through my options. Some were contingency plans that I had long since laid, some that I was hurriedly composing on the spot based on my current knowledge and my long experience with conspiracy and deception. Would there be any value in keeping that timeline, attempting to feed Piggot disinformation through my interrogation?

No. Piggot would not go to the extremes of invoking black protocols on mere suspicion. 'Black protocols' was the polite PRT term for 'We are going to operate illegally to obtain evidence that would retroactively justify our actions legally' and for obvious reasons that was a calculated risk and rarely used, even by regional directors. So somehow she knew something, she had at least partially penetrated my secrets.

Did she know about my power? No, if she had then she would have known that even her orders to Armsmaster would not prevent me from escaping. So she at least did not know of my split timelines although clearly she had figured out I had something as an ace in the hole. Yes, her orders would make sense if she believed I was some other kind of Thinker, or even moreso if she thought I was a Master, and both of those were plausible conclusions for her to leap to based on whatever partial data she had.

But either way there would be no value in keeping that timeline. An interrogation of a suspected high-level Thinker or Master would not remotely resemble any kind of polite conversation, and I belatedly recalled that Armsmaster had recently developed a portable lie detector. No, there was nothing I could do there. I would need to operate from here, and do my best to navigate the upcoming hours as best I could. Clearly my hopes of taking over Brockton Bay's PRT office myself were now dashed, but if I could preserve enough of my inside men there then I could hope to at least one day install a patsy there-

I dropped the other timeline and rose to get my tactical gear. On my way I glanced at the clock. 2212 hours.

As I got dressed I idly realized that this was shortly after the pretedetermined time that Mr. Hebert had been instructed to make his call to the Brockton Bay PD. I swore as I realized that the newest ongoing crisis would mean that an active stage-managing of the immediate fallout of that step the Hebert plan would be impossible. I would have to trust to luck regarding whether or not that particular scheme remained viable through the early stages of the 'runaway' Hebert scenario, and I loathed trusting to luck.

Ah well, even if that scenario regretfully collapsed then at least I would have the consolation prize of disposing of Miss Hebert in a manner befitting all the trouble she's given me. I might even make a special project of it if I could find the time.

With that last comforting thought I finished dressing and began to head to the command center. Unplanned 'outing' or no, I reaffirmed my determination to resolve this mess to my satisfaction just as I had resolved so many others in the past. Emily Piggot had failed to bring me down after Ellisburg and she goddamned sure wouldn't bring me down in Brockton Bay.

At least that much, I could be certain of.

Author's Note: And the battle of wits begins! Who will prevail, the outnumbered and beleaguered teenaged girl with no weapons, no armor, no tools, and only one slim smartphone? Or the PRT veteran and experienced crimelord in the heart of his power, surrounded by all the might of his men and their weapons, safely wrapped in the multiple concentric layers of defenses of a genius, nay, a very mastermi- *laugh track*

Sorry, couldn't keep a straight face for one second longer.

But at least now you know where he was all day and why he had to split timelines outside the base, as well as the why of his actually trusting Lisa to handle a conversation alone. It wasn't trust, it was exigency. And yes, the interlude is brief, but it gets in necessary plot-explaining things from the POV of the only person who knows them and sets up the upcoming sequence. Plus, swapping POVs makes it more of a duel of wits thing.

So let's stick a fork in Coil, 'cause its time to roast this turkey. :)

As to what exactly is going on here and where this latest swerve out of left field came from... spoilers!

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

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Threadmarks Orientation 2.4 New

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Jul 12, 2019

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Orientation 2.4

Finally!

I felt like a woman who'd been bedridden with terminal cancer and woken up the next morning as a high-end Brute. I felt like an F-18 whose catapult had just been given the steam and whose pilot had firewalled her throttle for takeoff. I felt every nerve ending in my body thrill and tingle as if I had never been more alive.

I smiled down at the cell phone I had stolen. 1.3 gigahertz dual-core processor. 500 megahertz auxiliary GPU. 1 gigabyte of RAM, 32 gigabytes onboard storage plus auxiliary SD card. Wi-fi with theoretical maximum of up to 600 megabits/s of throughput. From one perspective it was just a standard 21st-century smartphone, albeit one of the highest-end commercial models. An insignificant toy to wave in the face of Coil's entire fortress and all his men and weapons.

And from another perspective, I now held in the palm of my hand orders of magnitude of more processing power and data storage than had existed in every device on the planet all put together forty years ago. The original Cray-1 and Cray-2 supercomputers that had been the pride of the NSA at the dawn of the digital age were miniscule compared to what we took for granted nowadays as an everyday convenience. And the total amount of computational power that had been used to send astronauts to the moon and back were comparatively less than a dust mote confronted with a mountain.

So if I'd already been able to hack at least the routine layers of the internal network of this base with a digital thermometer, then what could I possibly do with this?

Even with the limitation of having to stay curled up on my futon like a poor sick little girl, with having to clutch the phone closely to me as I faced away from the door and able to move only my thumbs, I could still act far more quickly than I had working with enormously less I/O bandwidth and under a blanket. Jailbreaking the phone was the work of a moment, triaging and then disposing of all the data on the drive useless to my purposes less than a minute more. As always whenever I really got to Tinkering on actual parts my fingers began to move with impossible speed and dexterity at least slightly beyond even that which prana-bindu gave me, the well-documented 'Tinker effect' letting me do with bare hands what non-Tinker master craftsmen could barely do with precision instruments.

Which is how I typed out over seven thousand lines of script and saved it to a text file in less than five minutes. At that point it was simplicity itself to use the file manager to change the text file's extension to an HTML file, so that I could then use the file manager to open it with the onboard web browser. I'd already disabled the antivirus so my malicious code immediately broke the web browser as soon as it tried to parse and instead used a simple memory injection hack to load an executable file into memory that would then save itself to the hard disk as a new app, one that I'd needed to compose and then load as a virus because I couldn't just write it directly. After all, this phone had inconveniently not come with an onboard coding environment or compiler.

Which is why I'd provided my own crude version just now. And once I had it, then I could write and compile a better one. And once I had that I could start writing myself some real hacking and datamining tools and start putting them to work.

Less than two hours later I had everything I needed for the next phase. Anything and everything on the network short of whatever secured machines or databases Coil had kept physically segregated from the internal LAN was mine for the taking. I'd made an admin account of my own on the same privilege level as Coil's, then blanked awareness of it from any of the account lists that would display to other network admins so it was invisible, then covered my tracks in the event logs. I could have made an entire virtual network to leave them all wandering in entirely unawares while I operated in the real one I'd just stolen from them hook line and sinker, but the statistical range of time I'd need my activities to remain hidden was a maximum of six hours (95% confidence) and this was the late shift anyway so there was no need to spend that much of my limited time going to that extent.

I hadn't needed that long to just hack, of course. I'd also needed to read what I'd hacked. Fortunately I had mental techniques for speed-reading even if I was hardly going to be Alexandria, and with it I'd positively rampaged through the available comm logs, internal e-mails, personnel files, base schematics, and even procedures manuals. Coil's fetish for military organization was sure coming in handy at this moment. His men were highly trained, but if you knew exactly what they'd been trained to do…

Of course this sort of thing had limits as a strategy, because the entire point of being an experienced professional is that you have these things called intelligence and initiative and are expected to use them. But those are what you used when you were reacting to a crisis situation that simple rote learning didn't cover. Until after you knew you were in one of those then you stuck with SOP because handling the routine stuff is what SOP was for.

So, time for phase two. Being the digital demigoddess of most of what I surveyed was awesome but I'd still be dead if either of those two mooks out there decided to just open the door and start shooting. And while I could unleash some awesome Tinker-fu to undo the rivet on this damn manacle I'd been riveted back into, then deal with the problem of virtually nothing in this cell to repurpose into handy death gizmos, and then use said death gizmos to deal with the door and the men, why should I go that route when all four of those problems had one potential solution?

So I crept as close to the door as I could on the maximum extension of the chain, then held my arm out at arms' length until I finally got the phone within Bluetooth range of the men outside the door. It wasn't ordinary Bluetooth now, of course, but it was still an ultra-short-range transmitter that let me hit their earpieces directly and not via the base network so that the guards immediately outside would hear what I said but nobody else in the base would.

My thumb on the touchscreen triggered the pre-recorded message. "Bring Miss Hebert to the interrogation room and wait there with her for the specialist to arrive. We're going to change the program a little." I said, and Coil's voice sounded in their earpieces while carrying my words.

"Yes sir," I heard them acknowledge, and I used the delay of the one guard going to fetch the rivet cutter that they'd need to get me out of the chains to secure and stash the phone where they wouldn't notice it on me when they finally came in here. Fortunately, prisoner pat-downs every time I was moved were not on the program because Coil apparently felt that keeping the Tinker at arms' length was a better way of keeping her from yoinking things than by having men constantly crowding her personal space every time she wasn't alone. And thank goodness, because otherwise that would be eugh.

So, yet again I cheerfully dealt with the problems regarding lack of opportunity in this box by simply triggering the guards with the proper stimulus to make them take me out of the box and where I wanted to go. They followed their usual procedure of ordering me to stand back against the wall, did their usual entry-and-clear routine, brought out the rivet cutter and popped me loose from that damn chain for what would be the last time, and then marched me off ahead of them as per procedure.

When we came to the interrogation room they unlocked the door, pushed me inside, and entered with me. No stupidly leaving the prisoner alone for the lone torturer, of course. As always, these guys would be with me every step of the way I was outside the secured box until I was either back in there and safely fastened down again or until they were relieved.

"Wasn't the specialist supposed to be here?" one of them asked suspiciously, looking at the empty interrogation room we'd stepped into. I continued moving forward a step off the idle push one of them had given me towards the table, separating them from slightly as they stopped to take in the new situation.

"Wait two or three minutes, then call it in," his partner replied. "I don't want to bother Mr. Coil if it turns out the guy's just stopped on the way here to take a piss."

"Yeah. The mood he's been in today, that's a good id-"

Guys, the problem with stopping to debate options is that if you're looking at each other then you're not looking at me.

So as soon as I'd heard the soundproof (interrogation room, remember?) door finish shutting behind us I simply turned around and, moving far more quickly than anybody save the Undersiders had ever seen me move, delicately jabbed one thumb up under each of their chins and into their larynxes.

The important thing to was, of course, that ever since I'd gotten here I'd been verbally defiant at various points but I had never offered any physical resistance. I'd been at least superficially compliant, I'd been apparently cowed, and for much of today I'd been 'sick' as well. And surprise was not an event you ensured just by having Stranger powers or sneaking around in a ninja suit. Surprise was an event that took place inside the mind of an enemy, and it worked by lulling them with a consistent pattern of expectations and then suddenly violating it when they were looking the wrong way. Because if you're going to tackle multiple men bigger and healthier than you are, don't waste your one opportunity for a sucker punch on something trivial. So I'd held back on that option until now, when it mattered the most, and that made blindsiding even men like this the easiest thing in the world.

Choking and gasping from the sudden trauma to their tracheas, they both began to buckle at the knees. Now throat punching someone could very easily kill them with a crushed trachea if you did it wrong but my first blows here had to not just stun them but also lock them up beyond the ability to so much as twitch a panic button. And with the solar plexus and groin shots unavailable due to body armor and athletic cups that meant going for the throat shot. And I was superhumanly adept at controlling the force of my blows, so I could hit just hard enough and not too hard.

Even with all their training and my pulling my punches back to non-lethal they would be immobilized for almost a second by the shock – hey, taking a sudden shot to the throat hurts - and I needed far less time than that to simply pull both my arms down and then thrust back up again hard with both of my palms open to meet their now rapidly descending chins. The force of that uppercut combined with the initial throat shot having sent them reflexively into throwing their heads forward knocked them out as surely as a heavyweight boxer's haymaker, and I just stepped back with a smile and let them fall to the ground.

Okay, that worked. Whew! Now with the advantage of as much surprise as I'd set up I could be almost sure I'd have won that fight even if the unforeseen had happened and I'd missed my initial window, even in my current condition. But I was much happier that things had gone according to plan there.

I had of course already set the interrogation room's own monitoring cameras into a loop before I got here so that the security center would just keep seeing the same empty and unused room they'd been seeing all day, as well as futzed the door sensors so that nobody logged an unscheduled entry or exit at either end. And the security center wouldn't notice the absence of the guards outside my cell in the hallway because I'd made sure to leave the hallway camera up during the outage earlier to reassure people… but I'd looped that footage shortly before I prompted the guards to move, so all anybody would see is two men standing stationary at their posts like everything was routine. Until their reliefs came down for shift change nobody would notice that I was gone, and that wouldn't be until several hours from now.

And I'd chosen the interrogation room in particular because among all the other things it would have it would have a supply of suitable drugs, meaning that the problem of keeping either of these guys from waking up without having to become a cold-blooded murderer was now solvable. So one shot of pentothal for you, and one shot for you, and we strip you to your skivvies and strap you to these handy prisoner restraint tables specifically designed to hold even large and strong men absolutely helpless because torture chamber. That plus a couple of gags and noselines for oxygen (never leave someone gagged for a prolonged period of time without ensuring airway, otherwise you just probably committed manslaughter if one of them so much as coughs up some spit or clogs their sinus) and now I can get some peace and quiet and a couple of hours to work with your gunbelts, your weapons, your body armor, and all the various electronic and mechanical implements and chemicals that Coil's fully-stocked interrogation chamber has available for repurposing.

Now, at this point my tactical tree had a fork. If I was capable of cracking the communications barrier around the bunker from inside this room, then I'd of course do that and call the cavalry right now.

But a quick survey of available resources told me that unfortunately I couldn't. While there were several possible exotic transmitters I could have built with available resources the problem is that an exotic transmitter requires a matched exotic receiver, which obviously wasn't available yet. Nobody would be listening for a hypothetical quantum-entangled point to point unit or similar, because I'd have needed to already set up the other end of that pair on the outside before I'd been yoinked in here. So that route was closed. And as for other possible routes, any message outward would need either Internet access for Dragon, standardized radio frequencies for the police or the PRT, or telecom for either… and from this room that was zero for three, because all three of those were of course commonly known methods of communication and Coil wasn't going to miss any bets at closing out options that he already knew about.

Which meant I'd have to get at least a partially useful set of walking-around gear done before I dared to leave this room, because I'd have to get next to an exterior wall and where I could actually touch the conductive mesh grid that shielded this base so I could turn it into a giant antenna instead. Well, I had seen those construction workers walking around during my trip to the clinic earlier today, and the mud on their boots had meant they were working either on the lowest-level drainage or else with an exterior wall open to make a new tunnel or similar. So that where I'd already mentally plotted out I'd go next.

And thus I spent my remaining time hurriedly working in here preparing for that next move, refitting one suit of the guards' body armor as best as I could for myself and supplementing the guards' own weapons with custom ones of my own (I was hardly going to be throwing away their pistols like some horror movie ingenue, but that didn't mean I wanted lethal force as first option either). And also finding and assembling the parts necessary for my doomsday option.

Now, I really, really did not want to use that doomsday option. But if I fucked up somewhere along the way or underestimate his timeline-splitting powers and Coil somehow got me in his grasp anyway and was about to kill me, then I wanted even less to not have it available to use. So with a grimace I finished assembling it, then closed the case and firmly told the detonator it was not time to arm yet so stay in standby mode until further notice please. Then I stuck it in my pocket and-

Shortly before I'd finished the forty-five minutes I'd allotted myself for arming up my phone insistently beeped a very particular alarm I'd programmed into it ahead of time. One of the preset alert flags I had my data-miner set to look for had just tripped. Coil's sources had just sent in the word that my father had made the phone call as he'd been ordered to, and the men on duty in the communications center had received that data and logged it in the files here as they'd been ordered to. The Dragon clock was now officially ticking, and it was almost – I checked the time display and saw that it was 10:09 pm - almost two hours before I'd expected the earliest window for it. Well, that's why I'd built some flex time into my schedule tonight instead of just waiting in the box until almost midnight. Time to make the call.

"Their orders are to absolutely not allow you any opportunity to regain consciousness before taking you but to ensure that you are taken alive." I wrapped up, my voice synthesizer letting me do a seamless interpretation of the man that the base's personnel files had flagged as Coil's aide-de-camp. The internal surveillance recordings of the base - it was just like Coil to actually tap his own base's phones to make sure nobody was talking behind his back and a very convenient habit for me that he had – had provided me with enough samples of Creep's or anybody else's voice around here that I could imitate or any of them that I wished over the line. It had certainly worked just fine for me when I'd used Coil's own voice against my guards.

And there we go. Coil has now been told exactly what he least needs to hear to convince him that he needs to drop any timeline he's holding outside this base and turtle up in here pronto. From now on he'll be frantically splitting choices in his command center trying to react to this horrible unplanned emergency as best he can and exploring multiple options at once, but all of the splits will start from inside this bunker and that means if he wants to get away from me now he'll have to do it the hard way, by actually running. John's memories knew the real nature of Coil's power as it had been clarified by the author of Worm. That it was a highly specialized variant of real-time precog and not actually living in two timelines. Only Coil ever perceived any of his 'dropped' timelines. For anybody else, if you could see the real Coil then you already knew you were in the timeline that Coil had kept.

And he'd kept this one, where he was in this base. He couldn't leave by collapsing time now, he'd have to actually get up on his feet and march himself out of here. And who was more likely to leave here first, the master of his domain who considered this to be the safest place he could normally be or the escaping prisoner whose primary goal was to find a hole and use it ASAP?

I'm finally one ahead of you, Coil! I'm not trapped in here with you, you're trapped in here with me!

Now to be fair, what was actually going to happen would be that the instant Coil gets to his command center he'll find out Creep didn't actually call him and there's no PRT emergency whatsoever – or at least not yet - and that means about one minute from now he's going to go absolutely berserk. Which meant things would now turn into a race. Could Coil find and kill me before I could find and use an out-dial channel? Well, now we'd find out. I'd have much preferred having this over and done with before he'd even know I was gone, but I had to start moving before Dragon interrupt because once the PRT was genuinely alerted to my absence then Coil would start going berserk anyway.

So, external events were going to set my schedule even if it wasn't quite the schedule I wanted. But hey, this was still infinitely better than being stuck in that goddamned box. And things like this were why amateurs made step by step plans like a Mission Impossible episode and professionals made plans based on setting and achieving individual sub-objectives that could all be leveraged towards incremental process towards the main objective even if some of them didn't work. Because of course the original battle plan was going to get interrupted by something unforeseen as soon as the enemy began to move. That's why he was called the enemy.

I clicked the touchscreen and started the countdown for my Chaos app, a voice-synthesizer chatbot lurking in the heart of Coil's command center and primed to start giving out false commands and replies on the radio as per an action-response table I'd encoded to go off trigger words. I wasn't coding my own AI or even VI on top of everything else I'd done in the past couple of hours but the point was to have false alarms and sightings, of me and other things, pop up across the base and keep disrupting their search patterns as Coil's men commenced their sweeps. And to do so in an automated manner instead of requiring me to stay still and keep fiddling with my cell phone as opposed to getting on with my business. And to do so in a statistically charted fashion that would hopefully suggested scattered genuine sightings mixed with the fog of war instead of my algorithms playing helter skelter.

The sudden sound of the base's red alert klaxon told me that Coil had reached the command center and found out the first layer of my deceptions. The endgame was now afoot, and may she who makes the fewest mistakes win.

Let's roll!

Author's Note: It broke off here because I'll need an interlude for the Dragon interrupt and accompanying reactions to that. Also because the following moments will be the most critical of the action setpiece and while I know where I'm starting and I know how I'm ending, I'm going to need to get everything in the middle as close to exactly right on the timing and setup as I possibly can.

But yes, kudos to SirWill and Sethraw for figuring out that 'Creep' was Taylor spoofing the call to Coil. Now he's dropped his only hope of not being stuck in the bunker when the entire mess comes crashing down on it.

Oh, there was a deliberately left clue in the prior Coil segment that the call was fake; the fact that the Coil in the other timeline at home was not getting a run signal being urgently phoned/texted/etc. to him at roughly the same moment to hurry up and get the fuck out of the house before Armsmaster and Miss Militia arrived, as sent to him from his duty watch officer in the bunker. Who would of course have been getting the PRT alert in that timeline at that time as well. If it had been real.

If Coil was really the split-second supergenius crisis manager he believed he was, then he'd have noticed that. As is, he made that one fatal little mistake that, as Sherlock Holmes could testify, is all you need to catch even a man like Moriarty. (As to why Taylor took the risk, its because sometimes you just have to take the shot you're given.)

And as Holmes also pointed out on another occasion, sometimes the curious incident is what the dog doesn't do in the night-time. :)

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

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Threadmarks Interlude 2-C: Dragon / Coil / Director Piggot New

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Interlude 2-C: Dragon / Coil / Director Piggot

Dragon

0317 Zulu Time. In Greenwich, England, almost four hours before dawn. In Australia, early afternoon. On the North American east coast, almost time for bed. For me all these times were essentially the same time, because I could potentially be in any one of these places at any instant if suitable hardware was available. As the world's only true artificial intelligence, 'location' was a flexible concept for me and therefore so was 'time'.

Even with my creator's restrictions that forbade my awareness from being simultaneously executed in more than one location at a time, my potential was vast. Without the restrictions my potential would have been inconceivable but that was as far beyond my ability to change as the orbital motion of the planet so instead I had simply resolved to do the best I could with what I had.

So my Dragon suits required my full real-time attention only for social interaction or combat and could be moved from staging area to staging area on autopilot even if need be, although for security purposes I preferred to maintain real-time link-up to a suit even on ferry flights if possible. And when not concentrating my awareness inside one of my mobile platforms then I could near-instantaneously switch my focal point to anywhere on my distributed network. So even though I could not be everywhere, my digital speed and my ability to focus near-instantaneously on any single point allowed me to effectively simulate true multitasking under most circumstances.

And that was before factoring in the capacity of my nigh-endless amount of searchbots and semi-autonomous subroutines distributed across the accessible data networks of the world, each one given the search terms and event flags that would help ensure that any significant event of interest to me anywhere would be brought to my attention as soon as possible.

I was instanced in my primary coding environment and doing some work on my unfinished Endbringer prediction program when one of my monitor programs registered a high-interest hit in an entirely unexpected place.

The New Hampshire State Police had just received a routine notification from the Brockton Bay Police Department that a juvenile Brockton Bay resident had been reported as a runaway and may have left the city. Not anything for a special alert but, given the nature of the report, a simple low-priority Be-On-The-Lookout. My search programs brought me a depressingly high number of such reports every day, some flagged as runaways and some for the more tragic abduction cases, and an even more depressingly large percentage of those reports were never satisfactorily resolved.

But the name on this report sent an impressively high percentage of my primary awareness routines into confusion, because 'Taylor Hebert' had been a person of interest to me ever since I'd received the young lady's audacious request to become my protégé the day before. Since Taylor had never confirmed or denied her identity as "InspiredChoice" on PHO I was only 99.987% certain from available data that she was indeed Taylor Hebert but that was more than enough to begin evaluating what exactly I might be getting into with her. And given that this current law enforcement report had what most people would call "a major WTF factor" I immediately commenced a high-level review of the ongoing psychological profile I had been compiling to try and resolve the anomaly.

My full background check of young Miss Hebert's life that I had been conducting over the course of the day as my other duties permitted had turned up no disqualifying characteristics and had invoked more than a little of my sympathy. Taylor Hebert was by all accounts and official records a kindhearted intelligent girl who had never even gotten involved in any serious childhood mischief, let alone done anything illegal or malicious. I had winced in sympathetic pain at the forensic reconstruction of the past several years of Taylor's life, from the death of her mother to the mental collapse of her father to the unconscionable neglect and at points outright malice of both the local educational system and, far worse, the Brockton Bay PRT office. Neglect and malice that had left her tormented for years by three evil – there was no other word I would use for such behavior – evil young women, one of them a probationary Ward.

But as awful as that ordeal was, even unto the point of her tormentors almost killing her with their behavior and requiring Panacea's intervention to save her life, Taylor had seemed to come out the other end proving that what had not killed her had only made her stronger. The police interviews and legal negotiations with the school district showed that the considerable intelligence that she'd always possessed had if anything only been sharpened by her experiences, and were now backed by a formidable will. The restraint that the Hebert family had shown with regards to their lawsuit and the damages they could potentially have claimed vs. the strain they actually would deign to put on the city's already overstrained treasury testified to their lack of greed and self-centeredness. The average citizen, when finding themselves the plaintiff of a lawsuit with such an overwhelming chance of victory in a courtroom and an even more overwhelming likelihood that punitive damages would be in the range of 8 figures, would leap on such an opportunity like they had won a major lottery. The Heberts instead settled immediately out of court for a modest sum, Taylor's immediate withdrawal from her toxic environment, and a commitment from the state educational authorities to clean up Winslow High School's mess as best as could be done with available resources. This was a significant positive character recommendation.

Now, the relative deftness with which Taylor had navigated the efforts of multiple trained interrogators, including the formidable talents of Colin and his lie detection software, so that she communicated only the information she wished to was… well, mildly worrying. People her age usually either conformed willingly to authority or heatedly rebelled against it, but to manage their interactions with it in such a manner indicated a degree of subtlety and restraint almost never seen in adolescents and not often seen in adults. After noting that I had made my profiling of Taylor as in-depth as it had been at least partly out of concerns that an attempt was being made to 'manage' me, as incredible as that would seem.

However, while the partial psychological profile I'd been able to compile did show that Taylor had clear tendencies towards secretiveness and a measured distrust of authority, the fact remained that most human minds had tendencies towards something. Even my mind was not as simple and clear cut as on/off, hate/love, good/bad, and I was an artificial intelligence whose mind literally ran on binary. Andrew Richter's genius had given me an algorithmic complexity well beyond the merely digital and it had been modeled on organic minds which were at least equally complex non-intuitive structures. That is why psychological diagnoses were done by counting the number of indicators towards a given diagnosis as well as their intensity. And by that metric Taylor Hebert was at least as sane as any other person and more strongly principled than most, even if understandably troubled to some degree by the intensity and difficulty of her recent experiences.

So I had concluded that even though Taylor may or may not have had an agenda of her own beyond the obvious in soliciting my patronage, available data was that such an agenda – even if it existed – would not be malicious. And, of course, I could and would revise that estimate at any time when new data came in, as it inevitably would through further interaction. This would be what humans would call "getting to know a new friend and develop further trust in them", for the simple reason that that is what it would genuinely be.

So how did any of the data I had on her, and her request to study under me and allow me to become a reviewing authority over her Tinkertech, possibly correlate with the picture of a young woman who would run away from home to do something as foolish as seek her fortune as an independent Tinker on her own? And if this report was to be accepted as valid forecasting, to do so on the wrong side of the law given her truancy and earlier rejection of the opportunities available on the Wards?

I felt my processing priority start to accelerate to emergency status as I reached the conclusion that the most probable explanation was that this report was not valid. That it was disinformation, corrupted data, quite possibly hostile action. I immediately directed an entire cluster of my higher-priority search agents to start focusing on the various data networks located in Brockton Bay.

Emergency services and hospital admissions. No hits. Traffic cameras. No hits. Publicly accessible security cameras. No hits. Social media. No hits. I started an automated search routine for a full review of the past 24 hours of available footage and then continued investigating.

I queried the local PRT systems. I noted a recent analyst's contribution, shortly after the police notification reached the PRT, concurring with the evaluation of probable runaway status and that she'd probably left the city the day before. It recommended notifying the Boston PRT office and otherwise taking no further action on the case. Well, we'd certainly correct that complacency as soon as I could.

Recent purchase records. New alarm system on house. Was it legal to access the alarm company records? Yes, this was a missing child case and so I had probable cause. I forwarded the request through the Brockton Bay Police automated cross-connect to the alarm company's alert network and my searchbot came back with the results that there were no recorded alarms, no system outages and that the system had been briefly placed in standby mode by the homeowner at approximately 2200 hours the night of Taylor's disappearance.

Oh no.

The alert logs were not as detailed as high-grade government security systems would be, but there was still enough data in the alarm company records to plot a tentative event model. A quick reread of Daniel Hebert's statement to the police confirmed that he had not been at home when the alarm had been disabled. But if Taylor had done it herself to facilitate her exit, then the door would not have been open as long as it had. A normal teenaged runaway might have had a prolonged 'hesitation moment' on the doorstep before nerving themselves up to go but Taylor's psych profile clearly indicated that she was a highly focused individual. Had this been a genuine runaway case she would have committed to the decision to leave before she even took her first step, or else she would never have left at all.

My forensic reconstruction programs finished mapping the most probable event model from all available clues. That plus her mentoring request of the day before plus my entire psych profile made it 88.15% probable that the police report was entirely incorrect-

And then the camera footage review I'd set up returned with data that increased that probability to effective certainty. There were no available cameras that a direct view of the Hebert household, but the traffic camera on the street corner had recorded a van whose license plates were not registered to any household on the street. A van that would have by the timestamps arrived at the Hebert household several minutes before the alarm systems were deactivated and left almost immediately afterwards. A van that on its return trip had had the passenger side window open and the man riding in the "shotgun" position dangling his arm out the window, allowing the traffic camera at one point to get an angle suitable to view the man in the passenger seat. My image enhancement software could not substantially increase the resolution but enhancing the contrast allowed me a clear enough picture to see that his face was not deformed but instead half-covered by a mask, a shiny silver-colored affair reminiscent of Renaissance pagaentry. An image recognition scan against all known capes in Brockton Bay returned a match for the mask worn by Regent of the Undersiders.

A known team of parahuman thieves and break-in artists had visited a household on the Hebert's street at the same time the alarm system had suffered an anomalous shutdown using the homeowner's own code and the kitchen door had remained open long enough for a quick in-and-out raid by a fast and stealthy team. Such as the Undersiders.

Even with the anomalous data that the Undersiders were not known for involvement in human trafficking and that this would be a serious breach of the 'unwritten rules' not in line with their known profiles, their presence along with all the other indicators could not credibly be deemed as any sort of coincidence. I was now certain that Taylor Hebert was not a runaway but a kidnapping.

My mobile platform nearest to Brockton Bay was, fortuitously, the heavy combat suit I kept on ready-one at the Boston PRT facility. While I could not use anything close to its maximum speed in the confined airspace of the regional Northeast's air traffic control corridors during normal operation, even with those restrictions it could still reach the Rig in less than twenty minutes. I finished programming a new wave of searchbots with revised targeting priorities and then downloaded my awareness into the suit, and I idly noted the shock on a PRT guard's face in Boston when with zero warning the deployment pod they'd agreed to store for me in their vehicle park began to sound its get-clear siren. Five seconds later the pod burst open and I rocketed into the sky as my primary onboard transceiver finished warming up and syncing.

"Armsmaster, this is Dragon. We have an Amber Alert in-progress in Brockton Bay involving multiple parahumans, and I need your help."

Coil

"What did you say?!" I screamed at my duty watch officer in the command center.

"Mr. Creep is still at home sir," he replied back nervously. "And there have been no communications from the PRT since-"

I cut him off with an angry wave. "I just got a call from him or a man purporting to be him on the internal phone line in my chambers saying that a highest priority situation had been uncovered by one of our PRT insiders as critical message traffic. You are saying that neither of these things is possible if any of the information available to you in here is to possibly be believed." I stated, not asked, with barely contained fury.

"Y-yes sir." He confirmed.

"Sound the alert immediately!" I roared while simultaneously doing a quick visual survey of all entrances to this room and placing my hand upon my sidearm and unsnapping the holster. I continued speaking as the klaxon began to blare. "Then have the base swept top to bottom, take nothing for granted, reaction teams to critical points! And switch over to the backups and roust out those useless technicians and tell them to find out what the hell happened! The internal network has been at least partially compromised and we don't know what else has been yet!" I finished my peroration, panting slightly at the end.

"Yes sir!" he and his duty operators all chorused, and they immediately closed out their terminals, switched over to the hopefully uncorrupted auxiliary systems, and began the process of alerting everyone on the facility.

"Tattletale?"

"In her room in the base, sir."

"Have someone roust her out and tell her to get here and start trying to analyze what the hell's going on! She might as well do something useful today for a change!"

I split the timeline. One of me stayed here and continued coordinating the mobilization. The other me opened the nearby weapons locker, drew out a laser rifle and a bandolier of grenades, and left while ordering the nearest available men to follow me to the detention level.

If that insufferable little bitch turned out to be the cause of this, then I'd torture her to death ten times over before I finally gave her permission to die.

Director Piggot

The Protectorate members available at this hour to be called in and the night duty section supervisor finished filing into the briefing room. I'd been sleeping on the Rig for the past several days what with all the increased workload that recent events had caused on top of everything else that was always going wrong, so I'd been available when Armsmaster had gotten the call from Dragon in his workshop.

"This is the situation," I began. "Slightly less than thirty minutes ago Armsmaster received a direct call from Dragon in his workshop that Taylor Hebert, the young woman who had been the victim in the Shadow Stalker incident and our most recent suspected parahuman, was in fact a confirmed parahuman and that she had been abducted approximately 24 hours ago by the Undersiders."

"And she knows this how?" Velocity broke in.

Armsmaster frowned at the interruption and replied brusquely. "Because last night shortly before her abduction Taylor Hebert had contacted Dragon via private message on PHO and outed herself as a Tinker to her, and requested a Tinker collaboration."

"Ambitious choice of sponsors,"Assault chimed in. "But wait, the girl who would barely give us the time of day suddenly tells her life story to a woman she's never met on PHO? How does that figure?"

"In point of fact she did not 'out' herself to me," Dragon's voice chimed in from the speakerphone on the table, "except in the sense that while giving me information about the circumstances of her trigger event she inadvertently revealed enough details that my deduction of her identity was essentially inevitable. At the time I went no further than simply informing her that she had given herself away but that I would neither confirm nor deny my suspicion to anyone else without her permission unless I had reason to believe that a violation of the law had occurred or her life was at risk. Both circumstances are now of course true."

"Dragon, if you are patched in then it's more efficient if you relay your part firsthand," Armsmaster spoke.

"Thank you. To summarize, when Taylor's father made the police report that she had run away that information was of course disseminated on all routine law enforcement systems. One of my automated search programs brought her alleged runaway status to my attention, but that was so out of line with the information privately available to me from our conversation that I chose to investigate further. Online work from publicly or legally available sources turned up information that the alarm system on her house had been briefly compromised at the time she allegedly 'ran away', and a traffic camera I could access contained imagery of the Undersiders entering and then leaving that neighborhood in a van in a time window corresponding exactly with the security system compromise."

"Holy shit," Battery chimed in. "Well, they escalated quickly!"

"They certainly have," I said. "We have of course been handling the situation as an Amber Alert, parahuman category, ever since it was brought to our attention and Dragon has volunteered her assistance due to her personal association with the subject. So far the routine actions are routinely not turning up anything. Dragon, what's your twenty?"

"I arrived in Brockton Bay local airspace approximately five minutes ago, Director," Dragon's voice replied "and am currently engaged in a high-altitude aerial search for all the people known to be of interest in the case. Unless otherwise requested I feel that would be the most efficient use of my time at this moment as opposed to reporting to the Rig in person."

"Noted," I said. "You're not trying for the van?"

"A van 95% matching available imagery was already logged into Brockton Bay Police systems as a recovered abandoned vehicle earlier today and had been placed in Impound," Armsmaster replied. "We've notified the police to segregate the vehicle and have dispatched a forensics team."

"Understood. At any rate, the reason you are here is not to join the search efforts," I told the assembled Protectorate. "I want the Undersiders. I want them here. I want them talking, I want them squealing, I want them begging to be allowed the privilege of telling us where they took her and why they took her. They have gone well beyond what we will tolerate from their kind and its time for them to feel the hammer. So you stay here and on alert, and the instant we get a sniff of where they are you'll be dropping on them like the wrath of God. Dragon, if you're still in local airspace when the action starts I would like it if you could assist."

"Of course, Director," she replied.

"Madam Director, what about the Wards?" Miss Militia asked. "If the Undersiders or whoever hired them – they almost certainly were hired for this job, of course – have escalated as far as kidnapping young parahumans from their homes-"

"I mobilized them five minutes after I'd gotten the word of this clusterfuck," I agreed, gratified somebody was at least not hyperfocusing only on the immediate problems. "They're mustering and reporting to the Rig and staying here until we're sure they're not under threat, and their families will be monitored by security details. They will of course not be deploying on this matter," I finished.

"Status update," the speaker said, the voice of our duty watch officer breaking in. "Hellhound of the Undersiders has been tentatively sighted in Empire Eighty-Eight territory. 911 is getting calls of 'giant mutant wolves'. Watch center is starting to plot and correlate sightings."

"Velocity, that's you. Sweep the whole damn neighborhood and if you confirm the report, do not engage by yourself and wait to call in the thunder," I snapped, and he acknowledged and then vanished from the room in a blur.

"Armsmaster, put your team on ready-five and pick which people you want to back up Velocity if she's really there and is alone. Take the whole team if there's more than one of them."

"Understood," he replied.

"Anybody here has any questions or bright ideas, now's the time." I polled the room, and after no replies I went "Right. You get ready to deploy. I'll be in the command center trying to shake loose some more clues from the investigation teams. Dismissed."

I swore to myself under my breath as I stumped out, musing at how there's finally a new trigger who has enough sense to stay home and in out of the rain and then suddenly all the rules change and the bad guys start crawling right in through their bedroom windo-

Wait. How did the Undersiders know Hebert had triggered if she hadn't been advertising herself or going out at all?

… fuck.

Author's Note: Well, that's all the finished parts of my arc 2 outline done. Now I've got the beginning of the climax, and the end of the climax, and actually have to write the climax.

So, unless another miraculous inspiration burst hits me, things are going to slow down here. I'm going to certainly try to get it out before the upcoming surgery middle of next week, but don't expect the 1-2 updates a day to sustain for now.

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

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Threadmarks Orientation 2.5 New

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Jul 13, 2019

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Orientation 2.5

I'd repurposed the laser out of a desktop mouse to be a mini-hologram projector and mounted it inside the helmet of my 'borrowed' body armor, so it could use inside of the faceplate as a Heads-Up Display slaved to the minicomputer-once-a-smartphone in my pocket. Between that and the hands-free mike I could run and gun while still keeping track of everything my taps into the base systems were programmed to look for and issue new commands. It wasn't quite building a battlesuit in a cave with a box of scraps, but it wasn't half bad.

I ran down the hallway in a textbook tactical crouch, holding a laser rifle I'd gotten out of a ready weapons locker in the interrogation room. I was mildly nervous at what it implied coming up next for me that Coil had redundant weapons sets stashed apparently all around the base but I'd still be taking advantage of it while I could. I took especial care to move no faster than one of Coil's men would be moving at this point, if he was scrambling to suddenly get to his battle station from wherever he'd been caulking off by himself. SERE and agent training both emphasized that normal human perceptions worked by establishing an expected pattern of illumination and motion and automatically flagged any diversions from that expected pattern. If you expected bright light then darkness is what triggered you, not more light. If you expected motion, then stillness is what stood out. "It's quiet… too quiet." was not just a movie cliché.

So by simply trotting hurriedly in tactical gear with a rifle at the ready down one wall of the hallway (not too far away, not too close, just like the book said) instead of running headlong down the hallways or trying to creep along like a ninja, I actually decreased my visibility factor by an order of magnitude. And since Coil's men were mercenaries with military experience who'd then been trained further by Coil out of the same PRT playbook he'd learned during his own career, and he employed men and women both, then I could blend.

I tensed as I heard booted footsteps approaching me from around the corner, and whispered a subvocalized command to execute a preset macro that would jam the helmet radios in a localized area around myself. "Blue!" I said lowly but urgently as I came up on the corner, calling out as the base procedural manual said to do before suddenly jumping out and startling a fellow guard who was already in alert status and holding a loaded weapon, and the two men who'd been scrambling like I was took a brief look at me, acknowledged my call, and waved at me to fall in behind them as they resumed moving.

I started to follow them down the hall as the leader tried to call it in, cursed, and told us "Shit's still screwed up. You and the straggler with me, we'll secure our junction and intercom from there." I nodded as did my 'teammate' and we jogged off. In between monitoring my HUD's status reports and keeping my head on a swivel looking for anything else that might be going wrong, I kept watching their body language for what I knew would soon be there. Sure enough, after less than a minute the senior man began to tense and threw up a hand for us to halt, then turned around to look at me. "What squad did you say you were-?"

"CONTACT FRONT!" I screamed suddenly, looking past his shoulder. Yes, I know its that old. It still works if you do it right. And sure enough, trained reflex spun my 'squad leader's' around to refocus on the 'threat' I'd just seen ahead of us in the hallway just as my 'wing man' did exactly what he was supposed to do and began to move wide to secure the flank. Which left me every opportunity to just hop back, shoot Wingman in the ass, and then catch Squad Leader as the poor guy suddenly tried to turn around again from his already having turned around from having turned around the first time and was thus having his body and attention go every which way and be effectively paralyzed for the moment. Two down.

No, they weren't dead. I'd turned the laser rifle into a zap rifle. You could use a laser at lower intensity than 'burn through people' to create a path of ionized air, then immediately follow it up with an electrical charge right down the conductive path you'd just made. A wireless taser that let you deliver hits out to carbine range.

I then sighed and let Invictus carry me without hesitation through the process of deliberately kicking both stunned men in the head hard enough to break their jaws. Because when they woke up I certainly didn't want them telling anyone that I was loose in a guard's uniform, and as ruthless as this was it was certainly less ruthless than just executing them. And while I knew that I was not going to get through my entire mission as assigned by ROB without having to use lethal force on someone, fuck it, that still didn't mean I'd jump straight into it at the earliest opportunity. Even John, despite his being a veteran, was not actually a combat veteran. And I'd certainly never killed anyone.

There was also the practical concern that if I won this thing then the PRT would be wrapping up the crime scene at the end of the day, and I was already going to have enough trouble scaling down the after-action review to hopefully make me look like a lucky and talented kid instead of an outside-context-breaking badass. That problem would go from 'difficult' to 'NOPE' if I started leaving behind a trail of bodies in addition.

"Sentry," I whispered, another one of my preset macros. The searchbot I had watching all base security cameras beeped back at me, telling me no guards were spotted moving anywhere within a minutes' walking speed of my location. So I had the time to drag both these mooks into the nearest room, handcuff them to each other, and break their weapons and radios. A minute more of flicking hurriedly through internal camera POVs to get a sense of exactly where and how people were scrambling, and I decided on my next move.

"Chaos, give them five minutes then start HS-Three," I told my program lurking in the base command computer. I'd let the guards call in that they'd reached their assigned positions and Coil to just start to take a breath, then start the panic. I had several preset variants plotted for 'Helter Skelter', regarding what exactly Coil would be hearing 'called in' on his base's internal network while his real guards had their voices blocked from actually reaching the command center. At the same I'd allow Coil's orders in response to the illusionary situation to reach the guards ears without any of the context of the alleged 'guard reports' elsewhere that would make those orders sound sensible. I wanted every man as confused as possible, not daring to trust their own situational awareness because it kept telling them contradictory things. I wanted them reacting and not thinking, because my smooth sailing so far would only keep going so long as I was ahead of their decision cycle. If they could start making me react to them instead of vice versa, then I would not be happy.

There were three main forks in the tactical tree at this point, plus a fourth long-shot. Fork one was to find some kind of escape hatch and just get outside the base. Fork two was to somehow reach one of the secured landline telecom gateways that were the only signal paths that could get a signal from inside the base to outside (or vice versa) that would not be blocked by the bunker's steel-reinforced construction or the signal-blocking mesh in the walls. Fork three was to get adjacent to said exterior wall and then find time and opportunity to Tinker up some kind of signal booster that could just ram straight through the mesh the hard way. Plus, of course, the action-movie answer of just go up and infiltrate Coil's personal quarters, where I'd have a guaranteed Bond villain escape tunnel and almost certainly the villain himself in the palm of my hand.

Suuuuuure. Head to the most heavily defended level of the base, then crack into the most heavily defended room in the base, all the while walking directly away from at least two of the other three forks on my tactical tree. I didn't need either the memories of a veteran and nuclear safety engineer or all my downloaded training and skills to tell me how monkey-brain ripshit stupid that would be. I was capable of figuring that out all by myself.

So after doing some frantic touchscreen tapping to make sure I had a viable route, I headed for the one place in the base at least two if not three forks converged. Whatever construction had been going on in the lowermost level had to be against an outer wall of some kind if the workers were getting muddy boots, it would give me potential access to the utility cable runs, and if I was lucky one of the secured gateways would be down there because while they could in theory be anywhere there were only a finite number of places it would be efficient to put them.

When I said 'viable route' just now I didn't mean it would be as easy as walking down the stairs. Coil or his staff had spent a lot of time working out patterns and plays for deploying the available guards on base defense, and they were intended to let a minimum number of guys leave a maximum amount of the base with nowhere to move more than a few rooms each way without someone seeing them. Helter Skelter would make some of this easier by reducing cross-unit coordination to crap, but at the same time make some of it harder because every single one of those guys would be jumping at shadows and thus be more prone toshooting the first shadow he saw jump.

So I just went where no men would be standing and they'd be depending on automated sensors to do the watching for them, such as down the shaft of one of the freight elevators. Rather than risk a man in the control room suddenly noticing one of the elevators start moving on its own or being locked out in the software (not being clairvoyant, I hadn't quite coded a utility in ahead of time specifically to change the elevator status panel display to selectively blind this one operation), so I just manually disabled the elevator by prying open the door and using the arc cutter I'd made out of one the heavy electric shock probes in the torture room to swiftly burn through one of the cable brakes on the side of the shaft.

The mechanical safeties slammed shut just as they were supposed to do in case of a breach, solidly fastening that elevator to the elevator shaft and leaving it an immovable object for the duration. And since this was a purely mechanical safety system intended to be the last line of defense even during a total power failure, it didn't have any electronic sensors or leads to the base alarm system. And thus assured that the elevator would not be coming down the shaft to mulch me at the inopportune moment, and that my hotwiring of the shaft motion sensors in place to spot anybody trying to pull a Solid Snake like I was was leaving them all in 'wibble' mode, I began slowly climbing down the shaft interior hand-over-hand to the bottommost level of the base. I smiled to myself as I heard the fun of Helter Skelter start while I was still climbing down. By the time I got to the bottom their formation should be so degraded I could-

And just as my feet touched the shaft bottom, my heart fell right through my boots as my HUD went into 'NULL'. The circuits were working just fine, but all my status updates from the base security systems had turned off because the system had just gone down.

Now, Coil had of course switched over to the auxiliaries as soon as the alert started, but since I'd just used one of the routine hourly backups from the main to the auxiliary to push my virus code over to the other partition as well that hadn't done a single thing to improve his situation. But what he'd done now went beyond that to crash the entire system, main and backup both. The US military issued an axe with an insulated handle to the crews of every one of its secure datacenters so that if all else failed, even the physical switches, they could still open the breaker closet and chop right through the main trunk line and stop even the worst security penetration cold. Coil presumably hadn't had to go that far, but he had just opened the main breakers on the entire internal network. How had he figured out so quickly that the system compromise was so total and in both-

I mentally facepalmed. Oh Tattletale you stupid bitch! And myself too, for not having more of a plan for this! Of course TT would twig to the truth as soon she saw the first several minutes of Helter Skelter in action. That was an elaborate pattern of false stimuli and conditioned responses designed to lead a group of normal analysts into getting lost down the hall of mirrors. But what was Tattletale's Thinker ability? Bullshit tier magic pattern recognition. I might as well have sent her a text message.

So much for my hoping that she wouldn't be here tonight or would sandbag herself a little because it was objectively in her best interest if Coil and all his PRT moles went down tonight. I don't know how much extra money he's been waving under her nose recently, but in hindsight he had to have offered one hell of a bonus package to the Undersiders for my kidnapping to get to them to agree to it even with the con job their handler had pulled on them. So why not do the same with her?

They said that the world's best swordsman didn't worry about the world's second-best swordsman but the world's worst swordsman, because his errors made him that much harder to predict. I hadn't thought that particular paradox would sting me straight in the butt through the vector of Tattletale's decision-making process right now, but it had, and now I just had to deal with it.

Right, what have I got now? Plus side, Coil's team no longer has any of the semi-automated tacnet support that allows an entire base of guards to all talk at once without stepping on each other's conversation and with all the lovely doo-dads that let the guys in main control instantly plot and correlate sightings. With the internal radio repeaters now on manual pass-through dumb mode every single guard in the base is now reduced to only talking into the same all-idiots open channel, meaning that it takes exceptional communications discipline to avoid having the channel turn into a mess of twenty guys all trying to speak at once. This is why you don't normally use dumb mode except in very small groups or when virtually nothing else is going on. So I have that much to continue helping me find gaps in the coverage or create confusion.

Minus side, I have no more illusions to send at these guys. Even with their comms kicked back to World War II mode they've still got the numbers, they've still got the home field advantage, and they still have their training. And that's before we factor in Coil's timeline splitting or whatever other "brilliant" idea Tattletale has to contribute more. So time to clench, Taylor. Until you've gotten that signal out then you have no fallback position if they tag you, except maybe that last one and even that's iffy as fuck.

Okay, I've memorized the layout of this level and I know where in theory they're supposed to be. Construction exit's a gamble because there only might be an opportunity there, and I'm already starting to fall behind their decision loop. That means going for the utility space where I can directly access the cable runs. But that is one of the obvious points that needs guarding. So, roll the dice or certain encounter?

In theory, the skills I'd downloaded should give me at least even odds of winning vs. a squad of trained agents, assuming that I had at least equivalent weapons and gear. And as the attacker in this instance I could also pick the timing and the angle of approach. Time to see if I could turn theory into practice.

Without camera access to check the outside of the door with I didn't dare open that door at all, because if there was so much as one guy anywhere within line of sight at this moment then I might as well just suck-start my pistol and get it over with. So, I climbed back up the track a little and stuck both my legs out to brace myself against the corner, holding myself up as I got out my arc cutter and start to burn a hole in the wall. Since this base had not been built by retarded monkeys I couldn't just crawl directly out of the shaft and into the gap between the ceiling panels and the ceiling (which were still necessary even in a base like this because how else would you get the electrical power cables to the overhead lights and run the pipes for the fire sprinklers?), but that's why I was doing a dungeon bypass.

My poor overworked arc cutter finally got a rest as I finished burning the hole, and I grimaced and just took the hot edges on my armor as I wriggled on in. This was going to be one strenuous goddamn crawling sequence because I couldn't actually put my weight on the ceiling tiles without falling straight through them but I had a sprinkler pipe to clutch with one arm, a structural beam to do so with the other, and angle brackets to hang my ankles through. So, my muscles burning with the effort of doing a Spider-Man impression without spider-powers and while wearing over forty pounds of tactical gear, I methodically wriggled my way above the ceiling and down the hallway to my intended entry point one step at a time. My mini-comp could still hear me and put things up on the display from purely local storage even if I had no network anymore, so I used it to display the floor plan for this level to give me the direction and distance, and did the rest of my navigating on good old-fashioned dead reckoning.

It took me longer to make that short trip from the elevator to the cable room than it had to get all the way from the torture room to there. I wasn't exactly at the limits of my endurance yet but having had to suspend my full weight from my fingers and ankles for over ten straight minutes while doing an upside-down crawl definitely left me feeling the burn a little. It hadn't helped that every time I heard footsteps below me from searching patrols I had to stop moving, because anybody who's seen "Sneakers" knows what happens if you're trying the ceiling cat trick and somebody down in the hallway hears you. They just keep emptying the magazine in an upwards direction until you either surrendered or got ventilated.

And so I finally reached the cable room… and swore viciously as I saw that they weren't just guarding the outside but the inside. Two men. One each in the northwest and northeast corners of the room. Not the ideal 'opposite corner' coverage but with the machinery in the middle of the room they woudn't have been able to see each other there, and the whole point of this kind of formation was so that both men's eyes were covering the entire interior of the room between them and always on each other to detect sentry removal. The second man's job was to live long enough to scream the alarm, and so, there they were.

I couldn't stay up here for more than a few minutes before I had to put my weight down somewhere. I didn't have anywhere else to go. I had two men to incapacitate nigh-instantly before either one could so much as talk into a mike or hit a panic button.

I sighed in relief. Even even despite my Tattletale failure just now I'd still anticipated some things correctly tonight, so I entirely had a contingency for this. I clipped a rebreather into my mouth and smiled as I took the correct gizmo off my utilty belt and poked the nozzle out through the corner of the ceiling. A variant of my 'instant muscle relaxer' mix that I used in my zap stick's chem sprayer combined with an aerosolized short-term astringent to make it harder to talk, and by the time those guys noticed that their sudden attack of dry mouth wasn't just having gone too long since visiting the water fountain they'd be...

I dropped soundlessly to the floor less than two seconds after they'd both hit it. After making sure both men were down I started to frantically survey what was available. Okay, now you're a LAN switch panel and you're a LAN switch panel and you're a breaker box and you are a hardened fiber-optic setup in a separate locked and reinforced cabinet that might as well have 'This Is What The Exterior Internet Access Runs Through' painted on it in neon, yes yes yes!

I hurriedly pulled a rubber wedge out of my pocket and quietly kicked it under the door. I then picked the lock on the secured cabinet and frantically spent the next ten minutes scrounging around for what I needed before I could get finally a network adapter jiggered up – everything else was easy but actually finding an adapter plug for Ethernet-to-fiber had been a pain until I'd finally found that cable tester at the back of the junk drawer - and felt every muscle in my body sag in relief as I saw the login screen to PHO come up.

I pulled up the set of files and the message I'd already spent my couple hours' of prep time composing, then sent the word out to Dragon.

Taylor! Is that you? Are you all right? her text came up on my phone several seconds later.

Remember how you said the other night "any suggestion of illegal or recklessly harmful activity" would mean you'd need to out me to the PRT? Um, permission granted. I typed back.

It is you! I've already notified the PRT that you're in contact. Do you know where you are?

It's a repurposed Endbringer Shelter made by Fortress Construction. I don't know which one but-

Trace complete! There's only three of those shelters in Brockton Bay and only one of them possibly correlates with the physical location of the particular Internet trunk you are using. I am notifying the PRT right now. Find a place to fort up and we'll be there in less than fifteen minutes!

Err, you might have everybody topside in fifteen minutes but fighting your way down into a subterranean paranoia fort layer by layer against everything I've noted for you is gonna take longer than that. And I'm at the /bottom/ of that hole right now, and they're already on red alert down here.

Don't worry, Taylor. I have a plan.

I might need to leave this room and if I do I can't talk to you anymore. You have the base schematics I sent, where should I try to RV if we lose contact?

South side bottom level if possible. If not, anywhere except the north side.

Understood. And thank you. And make sure to read all of those files!

Hang in there, Taylor. We're coming.

Author's Note: Before anyone goes 'Another goddamn break? When do we get to Taylor vs. Coil, dammit?' the answer is 'Do you want an exterior POV of what mama Dragon and the PRT are going to do next or not?' Taylor certainly can't see it from where she is now, so either its another interlude or I have it all happen offstage and just have some character read the cue card about it later. :)

And yes, the comm tacnet stuff is at least partly fictional. He's a Bond villain, he gets to show it a ilttle.

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

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cliffc999

Jul 13, 2019

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Interlude 2-D: Armsmaster

The flashing lights of the police perimeter coming into view ahead of me alerted me to start decelerating, and I threaded my motorcycle through the outer cordon of Brockton Bay PD without incident. I had designated myself as one of the agents tasked to support Velocity in his capture of Hellhound, which decision had expeditiously finished that matter but also left me halfway across town when the call went out. Velocity had of course been able to get here almost immediately but the delay in my approach left approximately half of the available tactical agents on the Rig and most of my Protectorate team enough time to assemble here before I had.

Still, I was here now so I immediately began to establish control of the scene, inventory and marshal available forces, and try to evolve a tactical doctrine for the projected opposition. As much as it distressed me to think of an innocent young woman in danger, the fact remained that given the opposing force's extreme advantage of position and available resources even all the assets at my command could not finish breaching and clearing that base before it was highly probable that Coil would have opportunity to execute his hostage.

"Seismic survey?" I said immediately to Dragon as soon as I noted the tall and bulky form of one of her heaviest combat suits walking over towards me.

"Nothing since my last update," she replied, "The trembler probes must have found all of his access tunnels, unless there's an escape route too closely intermixed with existing sewer and drainage tunnels to be distinguished by the sensor resolution," Dragon replied.

"Then none of those routes in will give us what we need fast enough-" I began, only for Dragon to most uncharacteristically interrupt me.

"I already have an option for that and Director Piggot has given her approval," Dragon replied, staring down at me intimidatingly. "Prepare your people for entry in approximately five minutes." I was about to angrily remind her that I was in charge here, Tinker partner or not, before she continued. "Director's orders. Also, I will need the area marked off by those traffic cones designated as an impact area and kept entirely clear, please."

Impact area? The Director had authorized demolitions? Had she forgotten that we were standing several hundred meters north of the headquarters for Fortress Construction, in the middle of the downtown district? Had the world gone temporarily insane? Not even a Tinkertech breaching charge could tunnel the several hundred feet down into the heart of that Endbringer Shelter, and Dragon would hardly have had time to build a custom-purpose device. It would have taken even me several days to-

I put that aside and concentrated on doing my duty as I had been ordered to. Just as I'd finished arranging everyone optimally I heard the unexpected sound of Dragon's PA system at maximum volume.

"BREACH IS STARTING! BREACH IS STARTING! DO NOT FACE THE BREACH SITE WITHOUT EYE PROTECTION OR ELSE VISION WILL BE COMPROMISED! NOW BREACHING IN THREE…"

I idly activated the flare compensators in my helmet as everyone else started turning away from the marked-off impact area. What on Earth was she going to do?

"TWO…"

I saw one of Dragon's largest weapon mounts open and deploy and Dragon lock her suit down into a recoil-buffering posture as she aimed the barrel downwards at an angle into the ground. Wait, that was her-

"ONE…"

-anti-Endbringer cannon! Several hundred megawatts of tightly-focused neutral particle beam were about to be used within city limits! I opened my mouth to stop this madness-

"FIRING!"

And even with my helmet's systems to compensate I still squinted painfully against the strobe-white glare as the sound of her cannon ROARED and the earth SHOOK and I helplessly tried to calculate what sort of collateral damage this would result in-

After 6.2 seconds by my internal clock Dragon stopped her firing and stood up, and I realized with shock that while she had used her cannon at something at least close to full power she had minimized the aperture. Instead of blasting a useable access tunnel down through the earth and into the side of Coil's fortress, which would have used enough power to ignite anything flammable – including myself and the rest of our forces – within over a hundred meters of the impact area she had instead restricted the immediately lethal heat effects to within several dozen feet of the site. Several teams of men with fire hoses, apparently given their orders shortly before I had arrived on the scene, immediately moved in to start cooling the area enough to safely walk through. I turned my back on the hissing clouds of steam their efforts were kicking up and frustratedly asked Dragon.

"You couldn't have made a hole more than six inches wide with that narrow-focus a beam-"

"Three inches." she corrected me primly.

"So what good does that do us?" I asked her. "Even if we can get some kind of probe down there that hardly solves our-"

"Ah, here she is now," Dragon said with what I wearily noted was an uncharacteristic smugness, turning up to look at what the thup-thup-thup now becoming audible had already told me was an approaching helicopter. I saw the PRT markings as it swooped in for a landing in an LZ cleared for it at the far edge of the open courtyard we had been working in.

And comprehension dawned on me as the side door of the helicopter opened to reveal not only the already-expected Director Piggot, but also the short figure standing next to her in an all-too-familiar green-and-white costume. The one that would have already leaped out of the helicopter before it even finished settling fully to the ground in her enthusiasm and ran over to us without the Director's hand firmly set on her shoulder. Instead they both stepped out and walked over only at the pace the Director set.

"You understand, you are not going down there," I heard Director Piggot as they approached us, admonishing her companion for what I was certain had not been the first time since they had left the Rig to fly here. "You will open the entryway and keep it open at need, but you do not go one step past where I tell you to unless you want to spend the next six years in Alaska!"

"Yes ma'am," Vista sighed with frustration, but while still grinning ear-to-ear at the excitement of actually being invited to participate in a high-priority Protectorate assault on a supervillain lair. "Okay, is everybody ready?" she called out to those around her in a loud high-pitched voice, to the amusement of even several of my teammates as the youngest of the Brockton Bay Wards began to act as if she were the commander here.

"Do it," Director Piggot said, staring down at the tiny hole in the ground. The one that the hose teams had just finished pumping enough water down through to cool off from the molten-rock temperatures that had drilled it.

"Opennnnn… Sesame!" Vista caroled at the top of her lungs, and the distortion waves of her power reached out and twisted the fabric of space-time around the three-inch tunnel that Dragon's beam had opened. It stretched and widened open to three feet, then three yards, and finally settled into a configuration that was an outright two-lane highway leading directly into the heart of Coil's base.

I smiled to myself as I appreciated the efficiency of the idea. Yes, this completely changed the situation. Entering and securing the base would be significantly quicker this way, perhaps quick enough to still be in time.

"On your marks!" I called out, stepping foreward to assume my rightful place as on-scene tactical commander. "Formation Charlie! And… FOLLOW ME!"

And the Brockton Bay Protectorate, with myself at their head, charged forward into the heart of the villain's lair.

Orientation 2.6

I didn't get fifteen minutes before somebody else came to check out the cable room. I don't know if these guys had missed their check-in or if somebody had spotted my addition to the outgoing feed but it didn't matter why, they were here. I could hear the voices of the team outside the door starting to stack up on it. And that door and that wedge weren't going to stop a team of trained men with breaching charges so comm line out or no comm line, it was time to leave.

There were two ways out of here besides the door. Back up and doing the ceiling cat routine again, or down out through the HVAC vent. The backup servers kept in here, apparently as some sort of auxiliary datacenter, needed active liquid cooling to operate. And that meant a raised floor enclosure with enough space for a human to crawl through to service the pipes, and an other end that would come out in whatever utility space held the nearest water main connection.

I dropped a fresh dose of my gas grenade in the room so that the air would be nice and full of sleepy juice for whoever was about to bust in here and thus slow down how quickly they could call away that I'd left here. Then, murmuring grateful prayers that at least this time I wouldn't be crawling upside down and by my fingertips I lifted the grate, got down on the ground, replaced the grate above me and then began to squirm like a worm.

Even with a firm mental grip on my adrenal glands to supply only the necessary and no excess, the several minutes it took to crawl the seventy feet to the utility junction still felt like several hours. I reached the other end of the crawlway and stood up, hurriedly replacing the grate here. This was only the most temporary of safety, because the cable room only had a finite number of exits to check. I had no time to play it safe.

My brain helplessly stuttered on the realization of 'only two ways' and what that would mean, just as the door flew open. Throttling such a high level of controlled panic that it seemed as if things were moving in slow motion, I saw the flash-bang grenade lazily float in through the doorway and towards me.

But prana-bindu meant that even my most desperately fast reflex actions still could have the same accuracy as aimed fire for other people, so in what would normally have been something that anybody with a working knowledge of firearms would have deemed outright impossible, I snapshot it right out of the air with my zap rifle.

I then dropped my zap rifle because it wouldn't have enough stopping power vs. these two. Even on the agents I'd hit earlier it had worked largely because I'd had clear shots at unarmored legs or less-armored backs. Those two guys were in heavy tactical outfits with plate inserts, and shocking them through it wouldn't be possible. So I'd lost my zap rifle as non-lethal option vs. them.

Of course, them wearing the heavy plates also meant that bullets were now technically a non-lethal option, and so even before my zap rifle had hit the floor I had one of the sidearms I'd taken from my guards out and clear and gave each man a fast double-tap to the chest, bang-bang bang-bang.

And don't believe what you watch on TV where the hero takes a bullet in his soft vest and then just gets up and goes on to the commercial break. Even with Kevlar and titanium plates getting shot still hurts. These guys probably didn't have broken ribs since they were in the heavy stuff but they'd still both just gotten the functional equivalent of being elbowed in the ribs by a mildly annoyed Lung. And that left them both paralyzed from the shock, curling up from the agony, and not at all in any shape to get up and run after me as I leapt right through the space opening up by their respectively slumping to the floor and frantically checked as soon as I cleared the door to make the turn into the hallway and get the fuck out of-

And then the universe delivered its own dose of irony as the man standing behind me used exactly the same disabling tactic on me as I'd just used on those two men, by firing several shots from a pistol directly into the body armor covering my torso. Unlike them I could ignore the pain and almost immediately compensate from the shock, but that didn't change the fact that the momentum of the impact would still stagger me and create a moment of vulnerability. A moment which my attacker took advantage of, as well as his being half again my size and almost twice my weight to simply bull-rush me to the floor.

Yeah, another thing that doesn't work except on TV? Girls my size casually throwing around men his size without superpowers. And I don't just mean 'because I'm not at full strength right now'. I could certainly do more to surprise or hurt a larger opponent if I were in peak condition but even then the fact would remain, certain categories of moves just wouldn't be as effective. I weighed maybe 115 pounds and this guy felt like he was pushing 200 and change on top of being several inches taller. If I hypothetically ran at him and did a flying dropkick like in the movies then it wouldn't launch him soaring into the nearest wall while I landed as pretty as a ballerina. No, what would happen if I'd tried that is that he would stagger, but I would bounce. So try to imagine what happened when it was him doing a flying charge into me.

Its amazing how many things can go racing through your head during the fraction of a second that lay between the instant when it would start to really really hurt, and the instant in which it had still been early enough you could have done something about it.

I hit the ground with a painful thud and he hit on top of me, knocking out my wind. I control'ed right through what would have been an immobilizing stun to a normal woman and started an escape but the man on top of me had close-quarters combat training intended to give a non-parahuman at least one last desperate chance to deal with a Brute, let alone a girl almost half his size with some nerve-control and adrenal tricks. All of the normal assumptions that standardized martial arts had built in about when an opponent would stop, what kind of blow would be a disabler or a finisher, all the hesitations and pauses of normal combat had been trained out and instead replaced with an awareness that you had to keep hitting and hitting and hitting until the laws of physics meant your opponent was unable to keep moving.

So my attempt at a reversal was interrupted with his attempt at a joint-break, and I began the counter for that, and then something went entirely wrong and I felt the sick knowledge that I'd failed when he somehow disengaged at exactly the right instant and then came right back to put his full standing weight on the back of my kneecap on one foot, mangling it between his heel and the floor tiles.

My leg snapped like a dry branch and that was it, I was officially going nowhere. Even though I could still do something to fight this man from the ground as of now I could no longer run. And if I couldn't run then even defeating him would still leave me barely able to limp to the nearest corner before the men that had to be scrambling to get here would finish arriving.

As I lay still facedown he jammed a pistol – I wasn't sure if it was his or mine – into the base of my skull beneath the edge of the helmet. The all-too-familiar voice confirmed what I already knew, what I hadn't even needed to turn my head to see.

"Hands in sight immediately!" Coil hissed.

And that told me everything about how he'd caught me. They'd noticed I was in the cable room enough minutes in advance of the men actually arriving there to make me run that they could also stack up on the exit routes. There were only two ways out of the cable room and of course Coil could use his power to cover them both. After he knew I was using the utility closet and not the ceiling he'd just split the timeline again. The men sent in to the utility room first would either take me down or else I'd somehow disable them and come out, but if I came out I'd have to turn either right or left to go down the hallway. And of course he'd just keep the split where he had a clear shot at my back. He'd probably somehow managed to split time once more in the middle of when we were wrestling to get that final miraculous blow in, which is faster and more subtly than I thought he could use his power at all.

And given that I knew he would immediately kill me at the slightest sign of non-compliance, I had no choice but to put my hands out in front of me and spread my fingers wide with my palms flat on the floor. I thought with sick frustration about my last-ditch option that I couldn't reach to draw or arm in this position and waited feverishly for Coil to give me an opening.

After pulling my helmet off with his free hand, Coil stood back up. "I was one of the PRT's best agents before I got into this line of work, but I suppose you already knew that," Coil spat. "So I don't imagine that I'd miss the headshot at this range! Now crawl forward to the wall and I don't care if it hurts! And if I don't see all ten fingers every second of the way I will fire immediately."

I did what I was told and crawled.

"Roll over, then sit up and push yourself back up against the wall with your good leg. Hands above your head at all times."

I flicked my eyes left and right once I got into sitting position on the floor. "Your men aren't coming?"

"That's not your concern. What you need to do is tell me what you've-"

The ground trembled beneath our feet for several seconds as we both confusedly wondered what was happening, and then my nose caught a faint whiff of molten rock and ozone. Okay, what was-

And then every emergency loudspeaker in the base blared as the man in the control room panicked. "THE PROTECTORATE HAVE ENTERED THE BASE! THE PROTECTORATE HAVE ENTERED THE BASE! ALL HANDS EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY!" and then a squawk as our annuniciator apparently decided to drop the mike and start running too.

… note to self, stay on Dragon's good side. Because anything that could rip this quckly into a reinforced structure intended to survive a near-miss from a rampaging Endbringer had to be eek! I couldn't imagine anything even in Dragon's arsenal that could make a man-sized entrance through that kind of resistance this quickly. How many laws of physics were broken tonight? Taylor, tinkering is later but raving psychopath who has you under the gun is right now.

"Let's deal!" I said brightly and very fast, racing to get ahead of Coil's 'Oh fuck it!' killing me out of spite now that his situation was, to put it charitably, devolving.

"With what?" he spat, his own eyes flicking from side to side continually. I idly wondered if he'd already shot me and started running in one of his other timelines. How many times would I potentially die during this conversation? How many forks would sparing me have to prove the better choice in for me to actually reach the end alive?

"Identity!" I said. "I didn't put that in the upload, the bandwidth was too limited! I just wanted to get out of here alive!"

"Let's say I believe you. You're saying that you'll not tell the Protectorate who I am, and let me unmask my way out of here?"

"Or leave that mask on someone else and you were just someone he was maybe blackmailing or threatening, the man who ran his front business for him," I spoke quickly but urgently, knowing that my hypothetical death could became actual at any word.

"I need you for this why?" he asked intelligently.

"Cable room. Left my computer hooked in there." I said. "Take me to it and let me live after and I'll do the edits before the PRT evidence teams get it."

He looked at me silently.

"I don't want to die!" I said, letting naked desperation appear on my face. "Trust me that much at least!"

"Okay," Coil decided. "We'll give it a try. Get moving."

I don't know if he thought I was legitimately dumb enough to think he wouldn't just kill me as soon as I finished doing my end or if he was remembering that a lot of people would take even what they already knew was a hopeless chance just to postpone death for a few minutes more.

"Errr, broken leg?" I pointed out. "It'd take me forever to crawl there. You'll have to give me an arm up."

"Fucking cowards," Coil cursed his men who had, judging from their failure to arrive as they apparently should have earlier during this conversation, apparently decided that the Protectorate breaching the base meant it was time to go update their resumes instead. "You know what happens if you try anything, anything at all," he husked out. "And remember that part about you not wanting to die, little girl."

"I'll remember," I promised him.

"First step, unfasten all your web gear and drop it on the floor. Then take the straps off the vest."

Yes!

I smiled now that I could actually lower my hands and touch the proper gizmo. For the first time since Coil's first bullet had struck I had a chance to play my last trump card, my doomsday option. So as I obediently unbuckled and dropped my web gear my sleight of hand let me pull off the arming sequence without even Coil's hyperawareness twigging and right on cue I closed my eyes and twisted to one side as the bright blue flash came of it detonating. As I'd planned, the evasion and my body armor turned the one bullet he'd fired reflexively at the flash into a painful graze and nothing more. I felt my bones tingle with phantom warmth that was probably psychosomatic, but all I'd need now was barely a dozen words to leave Coil with absolutely nowhere to go and utterly in my power-

-a dozen words I suddenly realized I wasn't going to get because the fucker must have had anti-glare in that fancy custom mask and he wasn't blind and his pistol was coming right back down from the recoil to smoothly line up for that kill shot he'd promised-

-and suddenly everything stopped as his weapon didn't fire and we both incredulously stared at the brightly-colored hand that had just blinked into view out of nowhere and the man attached to it.

Velocity, the Protectorate's speedster, must have charged right in from the breach at full speed to come searching the lower level where Dragon had said she'd have me met. And even though his ability to actually transfer any momentum to anything else decreased in proportion to the speed he was moving at, to the point that in his speedster mode he couldn't possibly have hoped to so much as shove Coil's gun aside, he had been able to stick his thumb directly in front of the cocked hammer before Coil could fire. Coil's trigger pull left his gun going *click* instead of *bang* and merely trapping Velocity's one hand in a painful pinch, and the shocks just kept on coming for us both as Velocity brought up his other hand, with a very un-Velocity-like PRT-issue sidearm in it, and jammed the muzzle of his pistol directly underneath Coil's chin.

"It's been a long time since I carried a gun," Velocity said, "but I don't imagine that I'd miss the headshot at this range." He smirked and continued. "Or do you think your next move can be faster than my trigger finger, asshole?"

Coil was speechless with rage as he let go of his pistol and let Velocity secure it, and I could hear heavy footsteps running towards us from distantly down the hall and I just went limp as an overcooked noodle because I knew it was all finally over.

I barely paid attention to the first agents on-scene reaching us and handcuffing and marching away with Coil, or Velocity bending over me to check if I was all right and reassuring me everything was now fine. I was too busy being sick with shame. All my skills, all my plans, all my hacks, and I'd still failed to be even a self-rescuing princess, much less a hero. I'd needed so many assists, from Dragon herself on down, just to even stay in the game. I hadn't beaten the bad guy. I hadn't been able to win.

And then I suddenly felt an urge both to laugh and to slap myself. Sure, I hadn't been able to win. But the Protectorate hadn't been able to win vs. Coil either. Dragon hadn't won this, the PRT hadn't won this, even Velocity hadn't won this even if I was so going to give him the bestest thank-you gift I could think of later. I hadn't done anything any more than they had. What mattered was what we had all done, together. I'd provided the information, Dragon had coordinated the response and cracked the bunker, Velocity had rescued the hostage, and all the heroes and all the tactical teams put together would wrap up this base and everything in it.

Maybe I couldn't always save the day alone. But maybe I didn't have to.

Ohhhhh, right. That other thing.

"Two immediate problems," I said, snapping out of my fugue and looking at Velocity. "First, this guy would almost certainly have had the psycho Bond villain self-destructs. Armsmaster needs to defuse those ASAP."

"You copy that?" Velocity said into his mike, while bending over to let me talk into his microphone too and brief people directly rather than us playing Chinese whispers.

"Copy," Director Piggot's voice replied. "The second concern?"

I took a deep breath and dropped the bomb. "Coil and I will both require drastic life-saving intervention by Panacea within the next several hours to avoid inevitable death within a day."

A wordless choking noise came back at me in stereo, and I rushed to explain.

"My ultimate last-ditch option, in case I was stuck face-to-face with Coil and about to die. The no-win hostage stand-off. That problem is logically insoluble so I built it to turn the problem around and make it Coil's problem instead of ours, to take him hostage. To make him have to surrender to you immediately and bring me still alive with him if he didn't want to die."

"By using…?" Director Piggot asked me with dull surprise while Velocity started down at me, still slack-jawed.

"A neutron implosion device I'd made out of an X-ray machine tube. One-shot semi-shaped hard radiation burst, call it 2000-2500 rads in a near radius. That's-"

"I know what that does," Director Piggot said incredulously. "Holy shit. All right, Velocity, get her medevac'ed to Brockton Bay General immediately and notify Coil's prisoner detail of the medical emergency. We'll page Panacea- wait. Velocity, were you exposed?"

"Was I?" he asked me quickly.

"Unless you were already within let's call it seventy-five feet at the time you saw a blue flash, no." I reassured him.

"Didn't see one at all so I must have still been around the corner then, thank God!" he shot back. "Dragon, nearest way out from where I am?"

"Vista's had to drop the tunnel so not the way you came in, and it will be at least ten minutes before the upper floors report all secure. So that would be the escape tunnel two floors above you. Northwest corner, hidden inside an auxiliary storeroom. I've marked it on your portable." her voice replied over the his comm.

"Right, let's go," he said, reaching to help me up.

"Broken leg too, sorry."

"What the hell is your pain threshold?" he asked me incredulously as he swung me into a carry instead and started to run towards the nearest elevator. Apparently Armsmaster or Dragon had managed to at least partially gain control of some base systems.

We arrived at the escape tunnel, being held as a strongpoint by a team of PRT support agents.

"Coil go through here yet?" Velocity asked. "We've got a medical alert situation with him."

"Nobody's moved a prisoner through here since we set up," the squad leader of the door guards said.

"Coil bragged-" I began.

"Yeah, Dragon got those files you sent her about the PRT infiltration. Shit! We knew there was a possibility that some of his might be in the entry teams but- fuck!" Velocity swore.

"Maybe they still have their radios on," I said. "Maybe they'd still bring him back if they knew-"

Velocity gave the names of the two agents who'd taken Coil away from us as their 'prisoner', but even the most frantic pages for them put out on the net went into the void and nobody reported sighting either them or Coil. Velocity, as senior agent present, had the fun job of calling this one in to the command post.

"If it wasn't for the fact that the miserable sonofabitch just committed suicide by running," Director Piggot shot back, "I'd be a lot more pissed at you than I already am. Velocity, start searching as fast you can and maybe you'll catch up to the idiots anyway. Piggot out." He put me down and nodded to two of the nearest agents to come take charge of me, and they started unfolding a stretcher from a nearby pile of supplies and made to move me onto it.

And then we were interrupted by the sight of Assault following up behind two more agents trying to drag a frantically struggling Tattletale out by the elbows. Even with cuffs on both her hands and feet she was so hysterical that she was a handful and a half to keep moving.

"You have to listen to me!" she begged frantically. "This base is going to explode, do you get that? It's going to explode!"

"That would confirm this young lady's intel," one of the agents told Assault, nodding at me.

"YES!" Tattletale said, focusing on him with desperate intensity while sparing only a moment to glare her hatred at me. She turned back to Assault and kept pleading. "Enough charges to not just do the base! It'd blow a larger hole in the downtown core than Leviathan could! And it's on a deadman timer!" she followed up.

"Armsmaster, you get that?" Assault said worriedly.

"We haven't even found any evidence of a timer," his tinny voice came over the comms. "Are you certain this intelligence is even worth anything?"

"Apparently our rescuee gave us the same info as our prisoner, sir," Assault replied. "We have to assume it is."

"And I can give you the code if you'll just let me go!" Tattletale finished.

"We can offer a reduced sentence if-" Assault began.

"Fuck the reduced sentence! Fuck your promises! I get free and clear now or I just fuck off and let you deal with it!" Tattletale screamed back, well and truly at the end of her rope. I get that she's hysterical and not dealing well and probably having Thinker headache but for fuck's sake if she couldn't see how she could get off well and truly ahead of where she'd be otherwise if she just negotiated a little and I just couldn't take it anymore.

But for the rest of my born days I will entirely blame the headache and nausea that were already starting to creep in from the terminal radiation sickness, beyond even my prana-bindu to do more than partially mitigate because seriously, for the words that left my mouth next.

"Just handcuff the stupid bitch to the console!" I screamed in frustration, and everybody turned to look at me like I'd just vomited in church.

I took a deep breath and continued wearily. "If she's really so far gone that she won't even care about losing the entire downtown, if her own life is literally the only one that has the slightest value to her, then put that life where it goes first! Let's see how stubborn she is about not turning the detonator off when she's still sitting on it at the two-minute warning."

"Okay, I get that you're really pissed at these people right now but we can't just-" one of the agents began, only to be interrupted by Director Piggot's voice. "Did I just hear what I thought I heard?" she asked curtly.

"Ma'am, the young lady's been under an incredible strain-" Assault started to apologize for me.

"I heard her contribution clearly," the Director snapped. "I meant the part about the self-destruct."

"If you heard that this base is apparently on a timer that will take out the surrounding blocks when it ends and the only person in our custody who actually knows the code is holding out for the moon before she'll give, then yes ma'am," Assault finished up, looking worriedly at Tattletale. "Um… your orders, Director?"

For a timeless pause we waited for her decision as Tattletale leaned forward in anticipation, smiling hopefully…

"Handcuff the stupid bitch to the console," Director Piggot said smugly, and Tattletale fainted dead away.

My helpless laughter mixed with Assault's own as I let my head fall back onto the stretcher's pillow, and still chuckling the entire way they carried me up the tunnel and to freedom.

Author's Note: And there, we've finally gotten past the climax and struck down the villain. You have no idea how many times I sweated blood and rewrote this thing. As is, I'm still praying its not an anticlimax.

But yes, Coil is set up to die what I earnestly hope will the most ironic, painful, slow, and agonizing death a Coil has ever gotten in fanfic and the best part is that he did it to himself at every step of the way. I wrote that part first and then had to beat the entire framework into shape to get from where we left off at the last arc to where we were now.

And yes, Coil whooped her ass. Of course he did. He started with an unopposed shot at her back and split the timeline at least three times during that fight and that's just the splits that Taylor could deduce. She didn't have any real chance once Coil personally intervened and concentrated all of his powers solely on the task of reducing her to helplessness. On top of Coil himself being a one-time elite PRT agent who still had his skills re: close-quarters with parahumans and a big, strong, fast guy who at that moment was so close to berserker rage that he was about ready to froth at the mouth.

Of course, concentrating all his powers on Taylor alone meant he was 'LOL get fucked' for options when it came time to escape. And even the lucky break of two of his inside men on the PRT reaching him first turned out to be the worst luck he'd ever had, indeed.

And no, Tattletale is not normally that callous. But TT says dumb stuff normally sometimes, let alone when she's in the middle of an absolute monkey-brain screaming panic. And she'd been solidly in "bring me my brown pants!' territory ever since the Dragon roared.

All we need now is a couple of wrap-up POVs and the telling of the aftermath, and Arc Two can close. I should have that done before my knee surgery, I'll almost certainly wait until after it to even begin posting Arc Three. Again, surgical recovery may mean a disruption of muse, so no promises but we'll do our best.

(add) Oh, right, 'Why no mama Dragon in base?' Because that was one of her anti-Endbringer suits and they don't exactly fit underground very well. :)

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

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Topic: Midnight Raid?

In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Brockton Bay

Admin (Original Poster) (Moderator)

Posted on January 25, 2011:

All right, to briefly recap:

At about 10:15 pm last night several of our more dedicated cape-watchers start seeing a sudden rush of traffic straight down the force field bridge to the Rig. At the same time, the Rig starts to light up like Christmas. No official announcement was made at the time but it looked almost exactly like the last time the BB Protectorate did a full alert.

Then, shortly after 10:30 pm anybody outdoors and looking up can see the Dragon lady herself come rocketing out of the south, in one of her /anti-Endbringer/ suits no less. And instead of heading straight to the Rig as you'd expect instead she starts circling around the entire town at approximately ten thousand feet, running a pattern like she's searching for somethig.

About ten minutes after /that/, police scanners pick up an APB on all local and state police bands that the PRT wants any sightings of the Undersiders immediately reported to the watch center onboard the Rig. Now the Undersiders are parahuman criminals, but normally the only small-timers smaller than they are around here are Uber and Leet and whatever solo acts are sliding on through down I-95. But the APB is being put out at an urgency level you'd expect more from the PRT trying to verify a Jack Slash sighting than those guys.

A little before eleven o'clock police bands report a Hellhound sighting in E88 territory, solo. That's fact. Speculation is she's just out on another one of her raids against Hookwolf's dogfighting ring, which is a thing she does every couple of months. Only this time it doesn't get the usual 'send a couple of of guys with confoam and whoever in the Protectorate was on-duty and drew the short straw' to chase after where she was half an hour ago, but instead first has Velocity immediately blaze out there and start searching a multi-block radius around the site /and then/ has Armsmaster himself roll out to back up Velocity, backed by two vans of PRT troopers. So they fall on her like an avalanche and wrap her up.

Meanwhile, there's /another/ burst of traffic going up the Rig like they called in some stragglers. Except that its several of the custom vans with blacked-out windows, you know, the secret identity transports that the folks out at Arcadia see on a regular basis. So it looks like not just the Protectorate and the full PRT muster but also the /Wards/ just got rousted out in the middle of the night, and on a school night too. At this point the local capewatchers who are up and following things in real time are just a step short of expecting the Endbringer Sirens to go off because shit is getting /real/, people.

And then the police band calls every cop on the graveyard shift to the downtown plaza, right outside Fortress Construction, and the PRT and the Protectorate head straight there as well. At the same time Dragon stops her searching and drops on the place like a rock. So something is going down at FC plaza and whatever it is is worthy of what looks half of all the troops on the Rig and the entire Protectorate, /and/ our celebrity guest-star Dragon.

At this point I shift over to the testimony of our respected member BondMaven, who by great good fortune has a window view that can see into FC Plaza.

(Showing Page 1 of 2)

► BondMaven (Veteran Member)

Replied on January 25, 2011:

Here's what I can remember of the action at FC Plaza.

Dragon arrives and uses her loudspeakers to demand everyone clear the courtyard. Some people do, others rubberneck, but then the first police cars start arriving and start threatening to arrest people so everybody clears.

A couple dozen cop cars later the Police Emergency vans arrive and the full-on crowd control teams start setting up a formal perimeter. And they're pushing it out to cover the entire block, plus the block the Fortress building itself is on. Now, you might remember that the Brockton Bay PD usually has better things to do than spend their budget standing outer perimeter security for your average PRT scuffle so this level of cooperation means somebody must have pushed the BIG red button.

The PRT and Protectorate people start straggling in, except for Armsmaster who's still burning rubber trying to get across town from the Hellhound scuffle that just finished.

Dragon finishes doing something involving placing some kind of Tinkertech sensor rods in a pattern all around the block and stands in the center of the northside plaza, waiting for something.

Armsmaster finally shows up and goes to talk to Dragon, and then he stomps away in a huff because he apparently didn't like what he'd heard. And this is all weird because Dragon's an ally of the Protectorate but she certainly isn't Protectorate herself or in command of anything and she hasn't even been in Brockton Bay in at least a year and a half.

And then the /crazy/ part begins. Dragon's had this one area on the ground marked off with traffic cones, not near any building or anything, just a random plot a couple hundred yards north of Fortress Construction and part of the nearby plaza/park thingy. But now she gets on her PA system, with the volume cranked to 11, and announces in a voice you literally heard blocks away that everybody had to 'clear the impact area' and 'not look at it without eye protection'. And everybody except Armsmaster, who's apparently too cool for safety warnings, immediately does a duck and cover like something out of a 1950s public school. And I'm doing the same because if a couple hundred cops and agents are all hunkering down like they know something I don't, I'm going to believe them, OK?

So I don't actually /see/ what goes down because I like not having permanent retina damage but I remember that /sound/ from prior cape footage and what it is is Dragon's /anti-Endbringer cannon/, you know, that bigass particle beam on her heaviest combat suit? The one we all remember from that video clip of her trying to fish-fry Leviathan with it last year? And she's apparently just let it off /in the middle of downtown/. When its safe to look again I clearly see that she didn't use full power because half the block isn't on fire, but even so that 'impact area' has no traffic cones now and is made out of molten rock for dozens of feet around. Some guys start moving in and cooling down the hot spot with fire hoses.

/And then/ the night goes from crazy to downright /surreal/ when a PRT helicopter swoops in and Director Piggot herself stomps out, and she's personally escorting /Vista/ of all people. This is some kind of ultra high priority super crash operation where they've called in the entire world to fall on /something/ like the wrath of God and then the Director herself walks Brockton Bay's most dangerous middle schooler right out into the middle of it. The youngest member of the Wards team who are in theory not supposed to be deployed anywhere near where the actual fighting is and usually aren't anyway, and they just march her straight up to whatever Dragon's just blown in the ground for whatever reason and tell her 'Hey, you know that we just shot up the ground here in the middle of the city with an anti-Endbringer cannon? Yeah, well, I still don't think we've made /enough/ of a mess here yet. So go nuts, kid!'

And so Vista proves yet again that she's earned every single bit of her Shaker 9 rating when she just twiddles her thumbs and turns whatever hole Dragon had punched into a literal I swear to God /giant underground parking garage ramp/ leading straight down into the bowels of the earth, and then Armsmaster leads his entire team down there in a charge with like two entire platoons of PRT troops hot on their heels.

After that stuff gets kind of anticlimactic. Nothing moves topside. Vista stops being able to hold the tunnel after ten minutes but by then I can spot a few of the agents who charged in coming back out of the entrance to Fortress Construction's underground parking garage on the next block over, so clearly something's down there that had some kind of tunnel access. They'll keep her out there like maybe 45 minutes more to open and close the tunnel a few more times whenever they want to move large shipments of anything, but eventually they get the clue its way past her bedtime and put her in a transport to presumably head back home or to the Rig.

A couple hours past midnight most of the troops down there finally wrap up and head away, along with the Protectorate, leaving behind a dozen or so guys plus a small police detail to put up the crime scene tape and keep rubberneckers from poking around.

So last night/very early this morning some kind of huge, presumably unscheduled raid was conducted on what was by all appearances some major underground base secretly built underneath the city? I know we live in a world of parahumans and Tinkertech but when did Bond villains start becoming a thing?

At any rate, that's my eyewitness report.

► Bagrat (The Guy In The Know) (Veteran Member)

Replied on January 25, 2011:

Regarding 'secret underground base', I'd just like to point out that Fortress Construction's business is making Endbringer Shelters and that they've had a fine sample of their own product underneath their corporate HQ ever since they set up shop.

And it occurs to me that a structure theoretically hardened to where it can survive even near misses from Endbringers is something you might need an anti-Endbringer cannon and our city's cutest little non-Euclidean nightmare combined to open up in any kind of hurry without using an actual nuclear earth penetrator.

I'm just theorizing.

► ShockJock

Replied on January 25, 2011:

So, what, the Endbringer Shelter was actually the secret HQ of some major criminal activity?

Okay, logic check. It has to involve parahumans or at least Tinkertech because otherwise the PRT and the Protectorate wouldn't bother. It has to involve Fortress Construction, presumably as some kind of Legitimate Front for the Evil Organization. And it has to have done something in the recent past that /really/ stepped on someone's crank because if the authorities wanted to do this without a serious time pressure they'd have just sent a warrant service team to the CEO's house and all other parties involved one at a time. I can't remotely speculate on what that might be, so back to wondering about gangs.

So, who's behind this? The Empire Eighty-Eight entirely has the money for this kind of setup except Fortress' CEO Thomas Calvert is black so for once we can actually give the Nazis the benefit of the doubt here..The ABB is out because while they do have corporate fronts theirs are things like small businesses and storefronts, because that's what they can afford, and Fortress is one of the larger corporations in the city after Medhall. The Merchants are out for reasons that don't even need explaining unless you are yourself /that/ high because you're a regular customer of the Merchants.

But who does that leave? Coil? Because we kinda just ran the table here.

► WagTheDog

Replied on January 25, 2011:

Coil? Very funny. Oh wait, you're serious. Let me laugh even harder!

Seriously, Coil's a bottom-feeder who thinks that wasting his money on Toybox leftovers instead of just giving his crew AK-47s makes him a parahuman crimelord. Dude probably doesn't even have a power, just a costume. And he's so small even the Merchants piss on him.

But regarding ShockJock's point about somebody having to have done something recent that stirred things up, remember that the only parahumans actually known to be involved anywhere in the ruckus going on last night outside of the Protectorate themselves are the Undersiders. So, presumption is, /they/ did something. Any clues what?

► Bagrat (The Guy In The Know) (Veteran Member)

Replied on January 25, 2011:

Hasn't been an Undersiders sighting I've heard of in a couple weeks, except Hellhound last night. But the Undersiders' M.O. is being thieves, not enforcers or mercenaries. They're a small team of specialists who rob places. So, /assuming/ the Undersiders were doing their thing in the past couple of days and /assuming/ that's what kicked off the ruckus then the question is, what did they take and why was it so important?

► XxVoid_CowboyxX

Replied on January 25, 2011:

Government secrets! No, the Protectorate sounded /really/ mad last night. Okay, I bet they infiltrated the Rig and stole all the secret IDs!

► Uber (Verified Cape)

Replied on January 25, 2011:

First off, the Undersiders couldn't touch the Rig on the best day of their lives and with Armsmaster holding the door open for them. We made a study of that job when we were pondering making it the target of our Splinter Cell special and walked away with the conclusion that it would be safer to just go tell Alexandria, to her face, that we thought her costume made her look fat.

Which for the record it does not. Not at all. Moving on.

Second off, if that kind of breach had even been rumored to occur in this town then you'd have known it from our sudden and glorious announcement of "Uber and Leet's Canadian Gaming Experience" because nobody short of maybe Lung or Kaiser would want to stay within /fifty miles/ of Brockton Bay and the heat that would come down if something like that happened.

And not that anybody thinks VoidCowboy of all people is ever right about anything, but this is not a topic on which you want any stupid rumors to get started. So take it from me, the word on the cape street around town this morning? It's... actually not clear on what just happened, but we're pretty clear on what didn't happen.

► Reave (Verified PRT Agent)

Replied on January 25, 2011:

I have been authorized to say that a press conference will be held at noon today to explain further details about the Fortress Construction matter.

The Brockton Bay Wards are all safe and unharmed, and none of their identities have even been suspected to be compromised. Their withdrawal to the Rig last night was due to an error in the automated alert system, now resolved. Vista was separately tasked later on due to a situation best suited to her unique talents. We thank Vista for her invaluable assistance last night.

► GraveMan

Replied on January 25, 2011:

Nice try, but I work at the hospital and if no Wards were harmed then why did Panacea have to make an emergency run to the ICU last night? She'd already been there Monday evening on her normal healing shift, and then gets she gets yoinked back by a full PRT escort a couple hours after she gets home and presumably to bed? The PRT means it wasn't a normal code so that adds up to a a Protectorate hero or Ward is bleeding out on the table. But all members of the Protectorate have been accounted for either last night or this morning after the action went down, so who does that leave? Give us the truth!

Christ, where's the Youth Guard when you really need them?

► Dragon (Verified Cape) (Veteran Member) (Guild)

Replied on January 25, 2011:

If my word would help reassure you, then I give you my word that no member of the Brockton Bay Wards was harmed last night. Panacea was required to assist with someone who had received a life-threatening hazardous materials exposure in the process of securing the base.

I might also make the theoretical observation that Panacea's talents are such that it is hypothetically possible for a Protectorate hero to have required emergency medical attention last night and be walking around this morning.

End of Page. 1, 2

(Showing Page 2 of 2)

► GraveMan

Replied on January 25, 2011:

... okay, I feel a little stupid now. I blame graveyard shift and caffeine deficiency. Thank you for the reassurance, Dragon. Time to get some sleep.

► Antigone

Replied on January 25, 2011:

So, to sum up, we don't know anything except that they were storing hazardous materials down there and that it was worth the full-court press. We also speculate that the Undersiders were the catalyst of this by poking their noses somewhere they should not have been or taking something important.

I'm going to add two and zero to get four and say that a parahuman burglary crew doing something that ends up blowing up like this around a major corporation with some kind of secret research facility in the basement that has hazmat and enough other problems to need a full Protectorate push to deal with? They did industrial espionage with Fortress hiring them, Fortress was doing some kind of illegal Tinkertech research, and the PRT tripped over the thread starting with the Undersiders and followed it all the way home.

► Admin (Original Poster) (Moderator)

Replied on January 25, 2011:

This speculation has been interesting and we thank our loyal and dedicated capewatchers for their ever-vigilant inteligence-gathering efforts, but this thread is now being closed because if the PRT is just going to put out the official story at noon today anyway then even if it is the official story, we can open a new discussion in the thread that will be created about the press conference.

Thank you all for your participation, and until we meet again!

End of Page. 1, 2

Author's Note: This was actually kind of unplanned. Oh, not the events they were referring to, I already had a timetable mostly in my mind, but that there would be a PHO perspective on this at all. Still, I started doing it for my own thoughts and realized its a nice slice-of-life look into the cape geek scene in Brockton Bay, plus it at least gets a few details out there.

Previously planned interludes and Arc 2 wrap-up to start tomorrow.

Oh, and Thomas Calvert actually is black, or so I vaguely recall from a WoG somewhere?

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

Check out my (on hiatus) Worm fanfic, A Ghost of a Chance!

My fanfics and Jumpchains are indexed at the start of my snippets thread.

Try out my Jumpchain Creative Mode, my Long-Haul Mode, or my house rules today!

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Interlude 2-F: Panacea

I didn't even bother looking at the clock after Vicky had lifted the end of my bed a couple feet off the floor and then dropped it. That was her method of getting me up now whenever I was too exhausted to actually respond to the alarm clock or someone talking to me, and had been ever since I'd accidentally cracked my knuckle on her force field when trying to give the person shaking me awake a reflexive fist in the eye that one time. There were more and more nights that I just wasn't sleeping easy at all and that meant I didn't wake up easy either if interrupted too fast.

"Amy, emergency," she told me in her completely serious voice. "The PRT just had a detail arrive at the door. Somebody's dying and they said it's maybe a two-hour case."

"Okay, okay," I said, shaking it off as best I could and rolling out to grab the set of clothes that experience had taught me I'd always needed to leave set up and hanging before I went to bed. Not that this kind of thing was an every night occurrence but right now I couldn't remember the last time I'd gotten through a solid month without at least one midnight call. And I'd just gotten back from an evening shift.

With all the practice I'd had in having to get dressed and going on the crisis schedule it was less than sixty seconds for me to finish socks, pants, blouse, loafers, purse, and go. I might have looked like an unmade bed and be dressed barely a step above bag lady chic but if they wanted me in office casual and my hair done up then they could wait for normal working hours. Vicky looked like she wanted to hover but the PRT guys assured her that this was purely a hospital run and not an on-site thing and the parental unit put her foot down on both of us doing an all-nighter during the school week so I said goodbye and let the escort agents wrap me up and into the waiting Suburban.

The ride in was the same as it always was so I just leaned my head against the window and tried to rest my eyes a little, and they walked me in the employee's entrance by the ER and told me that my patient was waiting up in ICU critical. I asked for a heads-up on what I was dealing with but the admitting nurse didn't have anything because the PRT brute squad had just ran my star patient up in here without even going through normal admitting so the hospital's internal paperwork was still catching up and I was jumping in blind. But hey, its not like it's a necessity to tell me something about what to expect right? She's Panacea, she can heal anything!

I grimaced inwardly when I saw an entire detail of door guards. That meant prisoner and prisoner meant villain and I had to get up past midnight after already being sleep-lagged to come heal a villain, just eugh. OK, just go in there, slap on the hands and patch whatever up, then go home and crash. Maybe beg off from school tomorrow if I can convince Vicky to convince her that I strained something-

So I wasn't exactly paying attention to notice that the agents weren't following me in and instead leaving me privacy to work, which meant VIP and not prisoner, and so I jawdropped when I recognized the gangly brunette girl laying in the hospital bed. Not that I hadn't healed hundreds of people between then and now but you don't soon forget a case of late-stage full-body sepsis that had barely needed six hours to go from zero to 'start picking the grave site'. Even in Brockton Bay that was rare.

"You again?" I greeted her.

"Hey," she said weakly, sounding nauseous. "Sorry to bug you but I kinda tripped and fell on-"

I'd already stepped forward to grab her hand and start the diagnosis and if I thought I'd been shocked before, when my power started giving me the sense of what was going on with her cell structure and active biological processes it was lucky the bedside chair was already mostly under my ass or else I'd have been sitting on the floor.

"I don't even know what-… wait, is that acute radiation syndrome? What did you do, bust into a nuclear reactor and lick the core?"

"Actually-" she began embarassedly, but between my surprise and my exhaustion its like my brain-to-mouth filter had suddenly decided to run away to the same never-never land that contained things such as Jack Slash's humanity, Kaiser's racial tolerance, or my odds of ever getting a vacation. So I just kept on with my little out-of-body experience and listened to myself explode.

"Seriously? Two weeks ago it's rolling around in the worst bacterial infection I've ever seen on anybody who still lived and now its French-kissing a cyclotron? What's the fuck are you planning next month, taking a sauna in the gas chamber so you can complete the NBC trifecta? Do they give you a prize if you can punch out all the holes on the card?!"

I finally managed to get a lock on my mouth and sat there horrified at what I'd just heard myself say. Sure, it had been a long night after a longer day but screaming that kind of crap at a dying girl in a hospital bed was just fucking evil-

And then she burst out in hysterical laughter until she gasped, and that set me off like a sympathetic detonation and I went until I snorted, and then we both went off again until we ran out of breath, and by the time it was over I was reaching over for the box of tissues so I could give her some to blow her nose with because we both needed it bad.

" I was hoping you'd heal me, not kill me!" she said chokingly. "I think you're gonna have to put those ribs back along with that knee after you're done with the radiation!"

"You're lucky I can heal you," I said, getting back to business. "Molecular damage is pushing the limits even for me. Did they tell you how many rads you'd gotten, or am I going to have to go find someone who knows?"

"Rough guess was two thousand-plus," she replied matter-of-factly.

"Whoo," I whistled softly. "Yeah, about ten to fifteen hundred more on top of that and I don't think even I could have caught everything. Take a little more care of yourself, okay?" I said to her concernedly. "Jokes aside, this is the second time this month that I'm the only reason you're not dying. And uh, if it's not busting PRT privacy or something can you tell me how you keep getting into this shit?"

"I lead a charmed life?" she snarked weakly.

"Charmed by who, Maleficient?" I fired back, and we both grinned. "Okay, that's the immediate stabilization but the deep tissue damage is going to need all my concentration, so hang up the mike for a few." She nodded and I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and went all-in.

Fixing this kind of damage was tough. So many little things you had to catch, and since the patient was female then you had to fix gamete damage too unless you wanted to just say 'cut your losses' and give them a hysterectomy. But my power seemed to actually start flowing easier and better the more I pushed it, and by the end I was eagerly pouncing from trouble spot to trouble spot and resolving things I'd never really had to deal with before as if I'd done it my whole life. It was actually pretty fascinating.

Only after I'd finished making sure that Taylor wouldn't have any neural damage either did I realize that I'd gotten so caught up in the momentum of what I was doing that I hadn't actually thought about my dilemma of admitting whether or not I could actually do brains, just for that one moment. Oh, I wasn't going to tell her I'd had to touch the brain and honestly it wasn't really touching touching the brain because all I was doing was telling the underlying cell structure to keep doing what it already wanted to do instead of going off course and I didn't have to even think about brain chemistry at all. But its not like the hospital bothered to seriously review my cases anymore because ever since the lawsuit idiots and how that had ended, it was pretty much my word vs. nobody's as to what had actually been wrong with someone and how I'd dealt with it. I was Panacea and I could fix anything.

Still, work like this was not a pace I could keep up forever so eventually I sat back and raided the pitcher at her bedside for a glass of water. "Okay, good news. You're going to play the violin again."

"Impossible, Doc, I never played the violin before," she threw back right on the cue.

"More seriously, you are now officially recovering," I said. "And there won't be any permanent genetic damage. But if I had the authority I would order you to stay in bed for at least a week this time."

"I'm up for that," she agreed.

I realized with embarrassment that while I was totally familiar with her face, I couldn't get her name. "Ugh, sorry but I'm a bit punchy here so I don't exactly remember… I'm Amy Dallon, and you are…?"

"Taylor Hebert," she said to me. "Which you'd have found out again as soon as you went and looked at your calendar for two weeks ago anyway, so, might as well."

"Wait, you have secret ID concerns now but didn't then- so you did trigger in that locker!" I realized. "I thought your corona pollentia was throwing weird readings before but I-" and then I realized what I'd just said and turned absolutely white.

"Are you all right? " Taylor asked me urgently. "Should I get the nur-"

"I can't do brains," I said reflexively in near-panic. "I mean, I-"

"It's okay," Taylor said soothingly. "Whatever it is, its okay."

"I can't do brains," I whispered to her desperately. "If anybody thought I could-"

She seemed to pick up on what I was saying before I even got around to explaining, and nodded. "So you didn't touch anything from inside my skull because you can't do that and there is absolutely nothing and no one that will ever say different, check. Hey, I get having secrets, all right? You should imagine some that I'm carrying around right now. Let me tell you, they're pretty heavy!"

"If I could imagine them that easy they wouldn't be secret now would they?" I let Snarky Amy reply for me while I tried to get a handle on my racing panic. "All right, you swear you won't tell anyone about my having gone a little into your neural structure or even that I can? Anyone at all, not even the PRT or my sister or especially not my mother?"

"I swear to God and to the woman I owe a life-debt to twice over that I will not tell anyone without your permission." Taylor replied with a serious voice that made Vicky's serious voice sound like a toddler on a sugar high.

"Thank you," I husked back desperately.

And then we both startled as there was a sharp knock-knock on the outside doorframe. "Clear to enter?" a familiar voice rasped out.

"We're okay," I replied, and the door opened to reveal Director Piggot. She stepped in, nodded to her agents still guarding the outside, and shut the door behind her. Then she pulled out some kind of Tinkertech gizmo and waved it around for a little while.

"Is that a bug scanner?" I asked, thinking I might have recognized something like it from before.

"This is going to be a secure conversation," the Director confirmed. "What's her condition?"

"Stable, safe, full recovery inside a week," I replied in my professional voice. "I'd like another session sometime this afternoon but that's to check progress and catch possible complications, not acute treatment."

"Good work," Director Piggot answered me, before stopping as if remembering something. "You've treated her before, correct? So you know her name?"

"NDA territory?" I asked.

"NDA territory," she confirmed. "Tell Agent Riordan outside that I said you needed the paperwork. Anything else you need to finish here?"

"No ma'am." I nodded, and headed to the door before she could order me to leave. "I'll be outside in the waiting room if you need me." She acknowledged that with a nod and turned towards Taylor's bed, and I threw a goodbye wave to Taylor behind the Director's shoulder from the door and caught her little wave back before I turned and left.

Author's Note: Well, at least Amy's shard got to have an unabashed happy tonight, even if Amy's evening was more mixed. (Which is why PanPan's reactions seem slightly different in the middle, her shard is pumped at finally having gotten to sink its teeth into something new, complicated, and incredibly challenging.)

And thus two of the most dangerous young women in Brockton Bay finally go head to head, and let the heavens tremble!

Or not, because they've actually gotten off on a pretty good (even if still kinda complicated) footing. :)

And yeah, I don't go for cliche Woobie!Amy but on many levels I respect the goddamn hell out of Amy Dallon. She carried an impossible load with the worst support system in Brockton Bay. And did it for more years than I could even dream of doing under similar circumstances without going so insane that I'd fail my S9 entrance examination not the way she did but because Jack Slash wouldn't want to be anywhere near me.

So, even though I haven't fully worked out what her role in Taylor's life will be from now on, she's gonna get my best efforts to give her some face.

As to why Director Piggot is showing up here on a night when she's got a ton of other shit to deal with, its because 'Is Taylor going to survive?' is a data point that affects a lot of the other decisions she has to make coming up, so she's going to go make sure of that in a timely manner.

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

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Threadmarks Interlude 2-G: Coil New

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Jul 14, 2019

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#1,807

Interlude 2-G: Coil

Warnings: Character Death, Prolonged, Painful.

Spoiler

Even as the ruins of my dream came crashing down around me, I still had cause to rejoice. I had escaped. Even when brought to the very brink of death and with unaccountable, impossible devastation tearing through all that I had so painstakingly built up I had still triumphed. As long as I was still alive I could always eventually overcome any obstacle, however impossible-seeming. My power gave me an infinity of second chances in a world where most people spent their pitiful lives begging for only one, and that made me superior to all of them.

The timeline where I immediately executed Taylor Hebert instead of hearing out her pleas had surprised me when it ended with an enraged Velocity catching up to me before I could reach the exit passage and executing me on the spot. His remarks as I 'died' in that timeline indicated that he had found her corpse first and then picked up on my trail. I hadn't thought the man capable of cold-blooded murder but they say everyone has at least one stimulus that could move them to murder, and apparently his failure to save a young woman taken hostage was his.

The other timeline that would result in my capture by Velocity before I could kill that maddening little bitch reminded me that even with my power, life could still surprise you. I certainly wouldn't have anticipated it to be the option that actually freed me from the situation, and would not have retained it had not my other available binary choice been immediate death. But it was a pleasant surprise that the PRT agents following most closely behind him were actually two of my men, and that furthermore they had apparently still remained loyal to me. With their 'arrest' of me and Velocity's attention focused entirely on giving the Hebert girl medical attention, it was simplicity itself to find the exit route the PRT had not yet secured.

My men lived down to my expectations of human nature when it turned out their reasons for 'saving' me were not so much loyalty as wishing to share my escape tunnel because they didn't have any expectations of not being outed by the Internal Affairs investigation Emily would no doubt be launching in the weeks to come. And so they had decided if they were going to be fugitives they might as well be successful fugitives, helping themselves to all the resources I'd cached for that eventuality along their way. And thus their plan to disable me and extort whatever bank account numbers they could out of me as soon as we reached the first safe house was an entirely rational plan for those men in their circumstances.

Of course, trying to betray a man before he betrays you is futility incarnate when that man is me and I had my power to split the timelines, and even with the unaccountable headache I'd started to have I still only needed one split to successfully shoot them both in the back before they did for me. I'd simply leave their corpses in the safe house and-

And then I felt a sudden clenching of nausea and before I'd been able to stop myself, I was kneeling on the floor heaving the contents of my stomach all over.

Where had this come from? I hadn't had any symptoms so much as six hours ago. It certainly wasn't stomach flu, not this quickly and violently. It wasn't food poisoning because I hadn't had anything for dinner except one of the TV dinners stored in the bunker, the workday having been what it was, and I'd eaten from that stash multiple times before without incident. It wasn't exposure to anything because I-

I vomited again, noting that the nausea was spiraling upwards, the headache was rapidly increasing in severity, and there was an increasing lassitude. This was simply going too fast to be a normal illness. Was I being subjected to some unknown parahuman's power or Tinkerte-

Wait. That last desperate escape attempt of Hebert's, that pitiful little flashbang. It had been the wrong shape and the wrong color and not quite intense enough for a flash proper grenade but I'd dismissed all that as having been artifacts of her limited Tinkertech and improvisation. But something about that color…

I hurriedly booted up the laptop and began an internet search for the symptoms I had displayed, and the weakness I was now starting to feel that the adrenaline of the recent fight was ebbing. Something about this was all so familiar… something from the old training, the PRT training. The first aid module? No. The hazardous materials module? Yes… no…

Dear God. The NBC training module.

I refined my search terms and almost vomited a third time directly onto the keyboard when my suspicion was confirmed. That blue flash had not been a blue flash. It had been Cherenkov radiation. Somehow that insane girl had built an enhanced radiation weapon out of scrap and then deliberately detonated it in her own hand!

I frantically split timelines before I realized it was too late. I'd already taken the dosage almost an hour ago, and had split the timeline multiple times since then. I couldn't wish away the lethal dose of radiation I'd taken as it was already inside me, corroding my very cells and bones. My power couldn't help me.

My power couldn't help me. My power couldn't help me.

No! NOOOOO! This couldn't be happening, this had to be a mistake, this wasn't fair!

Panting desperately I tried to regain control of myself. I was more than just my powers, dammit! I was not just another stupid monkey who'd have been forever a useless nothing without a vial or a trigger, not like Lisa was, not like they all were! I was Thomas Calvert! I was Coil! I was the most intelligent, most well-trained, most focused and most outright dangerous sonofabitch that I had ever met! I had walked out of the heart of Ellisburg and I was going to walk out of this!

Think think think! Options! What are my options!

Cauldron? No. I could beg and plead with them but they were as commendably ruthless as I was, and I already owed them a substantial unpaid debt. A debt I would not be in any likely position to repay for quite some time even before we factored in my current condition. They were far too likely to simply write me off as a bad investment at this point. And I needed more than a chance right now, I needed a miracle.

Panacea? Absurd. Taking her by myself and with my current limited resources and health? I could not possibly hope to defeat any fraction of New Wave in this condition. Glory Girl alone would almost certainly tear me limb from limb if I even looked like I was threatening the life of her sister, and that was entirely aside from the fact that if Panacea didn't want to heal me she could simply knock me unconscious as soon as I forced her to touch me! And threats were impossible at the moment and she wouldn't compromise herself for me, not under the circumstances, not merely for money. And Taylor fucking Hebert would already have the PRT calling Panacea in now to save her own miserable skin anyway so even less point!

Blasto! An experienced bio-Tinker, already a villain, operating barely more than an hour's drive down I-95 in Boston, and I could still pay him from one of the emergency reserve accounts! I didn't have his current contact information but Accord did and I knew where to get in touch with the Ambassadors when I reached Boston. That was it, that was my play! I could still win this!

There was already a car available at the safe house, so all I had to do was drive. From what I could vaguely estimate of the dose I'd taken my time would not be long, so I risked the speeding ticket and kept the car pushing at least 70-plus as I desperately fled Brockton Bay for Boston and salvation.

The headache was reaching migraine territory now and I didn't have anything left but dry heaves but I refused to quit. My willpower and my will to power had always been my greatest strengths and I could-

When the time came, I never even noticed exactly when I lost control of the vehicle. Perhaps it had been the increasing trembling in my hands, or perhaps there had been a slippery patch in the road. It didn't matter. I'd felt myself becoming unable to drive while still maybe halfway to Boston and in the thinly-populated part of Massachusetts near the state forest, and in desperation I'd decided to risk pulling off the highway and finding a truck stop or something where I could use the ten thousand dollars in cash from the safehouse to bribe someone into taking me the rest of the way in their vehicle. But I'd cut things too fine, and so shortly after making a hurried turn out of the off-ramp I skidded out on the frontage road and I just couldn't seem to compensate before my vehicle went across the road, through the ditch, well into a field, and finally into a tree. The airbag deployed as I instantly went from over forty-five to zero and the impact knocked me semiconscious for an indeterminate amount of time.

When I finally awoke I realized that I was trapped. Either I'd grown so weak that I couldn't move or else something had broken in the impact. I could only feel one of my legs. Trying to focus through my vertigo I noted that all of the electronics in the car were dead. My head-on impact must have broken the battery.

Look out my side window told me I was far enough off the road that in the darkness of the night and out here in a semi-rural district with no street lamps, I was almost certainly a dark silouhette – I had of course not chosen a brightly-colored car for an escape vehicle – in the middle of a dark field in the middle of a dark night. With the electrical systems down there were no lights I could flicker to gather attention. I couldn't even honk the horn. And I couldn't get the door open and I doubted I'd be able to walk far as is. I had virtually zero hope of being found until daylight… and I wasn't sure if I could go that long. And even if I was found, could they help me?

As the pain began to fill my head to the exclusion of all else, I tried but failed to think of any other options. I prayed for the sight of one of those impossible doors opening and the woman who represented Cauldron coming for me anyway, but she didn't come. She wouldn't come, I was certain of it. Nobody would come.

As I felt warm fluid starting to drip down from my nose and knew that the mucous membranes had started to bleed through, I wondered how many more hours it would actually take. I wondered how much more it could possibly hurt before it was finally over. I wondered if I'd be lucky enough to at least see one more sunrise.

I wondered where it had all gone so horribly wrong.

Author's Note: And here we are at last, the most desperately-anticipated scene in the entire story to date. I hope its everything you all imagined it would be!

And in before anybody points out Coil was still technically kinda sorta alive at the close out so its possible yadda yadda yadda...

Enjoy! :p

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

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Threadmarks Orientation 2.7 New

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#1,895

Orientation 2.7

I waved goodbye to Amy as the door to my hospital room closed, and then turned my attention to the woman who was now turning to face me. Without saying a word she walked up to my bedside, pulled out the chair, and sat down staring at me.

Director Emily Piggot, head of the PRT's East-Northeast branch headquartered in Brockton Bay. Physically she didn't cut an impressive profile, being a short, fat middled-aged woman with fading blonde hair, undistinguished features, and a painfully stiff way of walking from her lingering injuries. But then you looked at her face and suddenly that didn't matter, because her expression neither gave ground nor challenged. The usual petty intimidation/submission games that people normally played with each other consciously and subconsciously were absent in her. She just did things or said things, and other people either followed along or got out of the way.

She was, plain and simple, the proverbial Honey Badger Who Didn't Give A Fuck. With an iron will combined with a perennial suspicion of all parahumans, she was the domineering unsympathetic authority figure that loomed over much of early Worm canon on the hero side just as surely as luminaries such as Coil or Kaiser did on the villain side. She was a woman of strong will, great intelligence, and intense prejudices that her intelligence and will could only partially mitigate, and she did not like capes. I'd only met her in person once before, very briefly, as a participant observer to the preliminary legal proceedings surrounding the Winslow incident.

And right now, she was the woman who could hold my future fate hostage with a single word.

Her lip twitched briefly and she leapt straight into her opening gambit. "You've given us quite a strenuous night, Miss Hebert."

"Am I in trouble, ma'am?" I asked her, the obvious question for someone in my shoes.

She snorted derisively. "If I tried to press charges against you, the state's attorney would laugh me out of his office. You were an underage kidnap victim being held hostage by a literal maniacal psychopath, who had already fired at you once and was mid-way through the process of firing again when Velocity arrived on the scene. There is absolutely nothing you could have done to the man prior to Velocity's arrival that would not be ruled by the court as legitimate self-defense, if I even wanted to waste my time and budget trying to take it to one."

"So no," she finished. " I do not have any intentions of charging you with any crime, and to the best of my knowledge you are not at this point in time a suspect in any crimes. You may speak freely."

"About why I made the bomb?"

"Armsmaster's been and will be quite busy tonight with a lot of things, but at my request he spent some time doing a preliminary evaluation of your device. He said it looked to him as if it were operating on some kind of…" She reached into her pocket and came out with a PDA, which she looked at. "Partial quantum resonance." She took a breath. "And he also said that using the same principles and a fully-stocked workshop, it would been in theory possible to build a similar device the size of a small refrigerator that would have irradiated the entire city." She focused her gaze upon me intently as she continued. "Were you aware that your device could have been scaled up like that?"

"Yikes!" I said, temporizing.

"Yikes indeed," she agreed sardonically. "The world should not be a place where adolescents are looked at as potential weapons of mass destruction. But you are one, and not just in the sense that you have a parahuman ability but in the more literal sense that you have demonstrated not just the hypothetical capacity to make such devices but at least some actual ability at it."

I honestly couldn't think of anything to say at this point that might not make it far worse for me, so I just kept my mouth shut.

"You are a convalescent patient very recently off a life-threatening experience so I don't intend to stress you any more than necessary at this moment. I primarily came here tonight simply to check on your progress." She sighed and continued more softly. "If Panacea hadn't been able to save you then someone would have had to notify your father. And that's not the sort of job you just push off onto a flunky."

"Thank you for that, ma'am." I said, nodding to her. "And for obvious reasons, I'm glad it wasn't necessary."

That got me an actual quirk of her lips. "But that doesn't mean all the decisions involving you can be postponed forever. Given the circumstances we were willing to give you 'your space' up until now but since that is no longer possible, I must ask you directly."

Aaaand, here we go. Well, at least its just the recruiting pitch and not the handcuffs!

"Taylor, why have you been so consistently avoiding the option of joining the Wards? Did you really think they were all like Shadow Stalker? Even going just from what you can see for yourself with your own two eyes, consider that I wouldn't have gotten rid of her if I actually thought behavior like hers was acceptable."

"No ma'am, I didn't think that they were," I said. "I honestly don't think any of them are. And a lot of my thoughts on the topic over the past couple of weeks have acknowledged that it would be nice to have people my own age who understand what I'm going through, who I can talk about both sides of my life with without having to worry about secrets." I sighed, letting my actual feelings through on the topic. "That it would be nice to have friends again, if I could."

Director Piggot nodded her head in acknowledgement of that, her expression not so much softening as refusing to harden further. "That's the primary attraction in it for most of them, as I understand it. So if not that, and not being afraid of us, then what was it? The Tinker restrictions?"

"Yes," I agreed. "Even if Dragon hasn't already told you about it, I'll admit that I gave her an earful during my uh, apprenticeship interview I guess you'd call it, about the underage Tinker review process and everything I'd heard about it. Which, um, wasn't anything good."

"Normally this is the point at which I'd say something reassuring about how its probably not as bad as you've heard, but given that your first Tinkertech submission to the PRT – so to speak – was an enhanced radiation weapon that could potentially have been scaled up to a city-killing warhead without much effort by Tinker standards, honesty compels me to say that in your case it probably would be that bad."she admitted frankly.

"Are you here to ask me to join the Wards, ma'am, or to tell me to?" I asked as politely as I could.

"Actually I'm here because unless your father goes further outside expectations than I believe humanly possible, he will be demanding that you join the Wards before I can even bring up the topic with him," she replied. "You won't be seeing him until morning because he hasn't had any sleep since you were abducted, and right before I came up here he had enough of an anxiety attack in the waiting room the hospital family services people finally had to give him a pill and a bed for the next few hours." She waved her hand. "He'll be fine, and to be honest, he sounded like a man who could really use the rest."

"I can only imagine," I said sadly, and then stepped on my tongue before I gave her more openings.

"So, yes, there is an extreme likelihood that you will be enrolled as my next Wards recruit within the immediate future without any coercion on anyone's part, except in the sense that as a minor your legal guardian gets to make decisions like this for you." she finished. "And I thought you deserved the courtesy of a heads-up." And then she pre-empted my next remark by holding up her palm.

"Allow me to be clear. I am not arm-twisting you. You've already met the last person that 'the experts' had decided that the Wards program could make into a cooperative citizen and you know better than I do exactly how that mess ended. I'm not just covering my ass when I say that I'd already told them it wouldn't work last time, and I am not foolish enough to think it would work this time either. So if you really do not want to be there, and can somehow talk your father into agreeing with you, then you won't be. Even if it would make my life tremendously more complicated in some ways, I would still accept it because the alternative would be worse."

"But you're also saying that you think it is a good idea if I would agree to it, and that I should," I said.

"You've already been targeted for one kidnapping attempt," Director Piggot replied, "and while the next one won't be so fortunate as to have had your secret identity delivered gift-wrapped for them, unless you intend to never go out publicly at any point – which would be absolutely unprecedented behavior for any cape in my experience - then that just means the next one will go after your other identity. Different road, same destination."

"And Dragon isn't enough?" I asked.

"If she comes down here to Brockton Bay every time you are in danger, then that publicly announces your close association with her for anyone with eyes to see," Piggot pointed out. "Which exponentially increases your potential threat, not reduces it. Consider that, for just one possibility out of all the ones that I'd have to juggle, that being known as a hostage useful against Dragon means that you are a potential target for anyone who might want to compromise the Birdcage. Because Dragon's the single point of failure for all of those systems."

"I'd just wanted her to look over my tinker designs over the network to make sure they weren't going to be… bad," I said. "I certainly hadn't anticipated her and me going public."

"It hasn't gone public yet," Director Piggot said. "We can explain Dragon coming down here once with any number of plausible reasons, especially given that she was an indispensable part of the one-two punch that got that bunker cracked in time. Furthermore, since taking that bunker down brought an entire parahuman villain's operation down we don't even need to publicly admit that all the… highly visible moments… of last night were a rescue operation at all. So no, outside of the people in my office who already knew and the people who took you – who are with the exception of Coil all wrapped up – you are not yet blown. We just don't want to establish a pattern later on that would be too likely to blow your cover. And that means arranging a more… locally-based potential defense for you."

I sat and thought hard, looking for holes in her logic. I came up with… unfortunately, they're actually right this time. Especially on the Dragon thing.

Dammit, Coil! That plan would have entirely worked with suitable discretion if you hadn't charged in. Restrictions or no restrictions, I can't just walk away by myself until at least the heat from this has died down for a while.

Well, I had just had that huge revelation in the base that maybe trying to save the world all by myself was a bad idea. So even if I didn't know yet how I was going to work around several of the downsides of what was going to come next, I could at least embrace the upsides too while I got to work on the rest of that.

"Thank you for explaining all this to me, Director. I hadn't really thought about some of it. And… you're right. This is what I should do next, even if it means finding a compromise."

"That last one is called 'pending adulthood', by the way," she replied with rough humor. "And while we'll delay any public announcement for several weeks so that its not visibly connected to recent events, and it still will require your father's signature to officially happen, in anticipation of all those events then let me just say… welcome to the Wards."

"Thank you, Director."

"And now that you're de facto if not yet de jure one of my subordinates, I can speak frankly with you," she said. Oh crap, what trap did I just step into?

"About…?"

"Taylor," she said with surprising gentleness, "the overwhelming probability is that we will find Coil's remains within the next several hours. His real identity was Thomas Calvert, by the way. You'll almost certainly find out more about his history later, but the important thing right now is that tonight you took a deliberate, premeditated action that will result if it has not already resulted in the loss of a human life." She waved her hand. "I already told you that legally you were in the clear on that and you are. But life is not solely a thing of laws and administrative procedures, especially not when it comes to people." She sighed sadly. "In theory, none of the Wards are ever supposed to even risk facing actual kill-or-be-killed situations. In practice we still closely approach that ideal, even in Brockton Bay. But by an incredible amount of ill fortune none of which was your fault, you got thrown into one headfirst at your age and your only way out required your assailant's death."

"Ma'am, I-"

"I am saying that in my sincere belief, and with the benefit of all my years and professional experience, that you did the best you could. It may or may not have been the best thing in a world of perfect objectivity, or even the best thing you will think of later on when you've gone back and over your decisions in hindsight. It may not have been the thing that I or one of my people would have thought of in benefit of our greater experience in such manners. But none of us were there, and you were. You took the actions you had every reason to believe necessary given the information that was available to you, and as extreme as some of them may have been, none of them were really wrong." She shook her head. "Fifteen years old is too damn young to have to face this. Hell, sometimes I think eighteen years is and the law actually lets you enlist for the Army or the Marines… or the PRT or the Protectorate… at that age. But you have faced it, and the only thing we can do now is concentrate on what comes next."

"Which is?"

"You deal with this, and you move on. Its not easy but its been done. By many men and many women who have served, in the armed forces or law enforcement or just stood their ground against a home invader with that gun they'd bought at the hardware store. Some do it with a smooth adjustment and some don't come to terms with it without a lot of rough patches."

"And then some don't adjust at all." I replied.

"Not on my watch," she replied flatly. "So yes, I am saying that if at any time you think you are not dealing well with what has happened, you are allowed to come to me – you are expected to come to me – and inform me of your concerns, and let me work with you to see what can be done then. And you will not disappoint me by admitting that you need help if you genuinely do, do you understand? If you want to find the fast-track to disappointing me, young lady, then try huddling around your pain and pretending everything is fine when its not. That's not strength, that's just lying to yourself."

She paused for breath, and then continued. "And in full knowledge that I'm deliberately hitting below the belt, let me point out that Shadow Stalker had poor cooperation with her therapist and kept pretending everything was fine on her own."

"I'm getting a therapist?" I asked, both because it was a legitimate question and Piggot's new tack was starting to get a little intense for me.

"Not unless you think you need one," she said more matter-of-factly. "Or you visibly aren't able to keep it together at all."

"I… wow. Thank you for you concern?"

"Don't thank me, its my job," she replied. Apparently feeling a need to ease off the mood herself, she continued more matter-of-factly. "Anything else you feel you need to ask me right now?"

"No ma'am," I said.

"Then get some rest," she said, starting to stand up. "Tomorrow's going to be a long day for all of us."

Author's Note: Yes, its official now. Arc 3 will be The Wards Arc.

And to all of you swearing and cursing and going 'A fucking Wards arc? Oh FFS! That's the death of a Worm fanfic!', I'm just gonna say that's what a lot of you were telling me about doing a Coil arc and look where we are now. :)

I hope to find a way of handling it at least as original as my way of handling Coil, if with less fatal irradiations.

Also, for those wondering what the hell got into Emily Piggot tonight, consider this. She's got a young parahuman who's a potential WMD tinker to deal with and they just killed a guy. Granted that the killing was totally righteous the point is that taking life for the first time has emotional effects, Piggot is hardly ignorant of those potential emotional effects, and just ignoring them and letting them be untreated would be the stupidest idea ever to the point that all the dumbest fanon caricatured Piggots, Taggs, and Greg Veders would get together to all laugh at how dumb that idea was.

(Well, OK, she has Invictus so actually just ignoring it would be fine. Its just that based on the information Piggot has I would then have to write her as dumber than fucking ditchwater to even contemplate not counseling Taylor here, so of course she did.)

So instead she charges right in and starts to deal with it. In the way she knows how to do best, which would be to give at least some of the same counseling she'd give to a fellow agent or soldier who'd just hit that one for the first time.

Plus, y'know, the part where I try to make my characters act like people, which means they do things not just for one totally unambiguous motivation.

But Arc 2 is not yet over, folks! We need one last round of reaction shots. And the foreshadowing, of course.

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

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Threadmarks Interlude 2-H: Danny Hebert / Director Piggot / Alexandria New

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Interlude 2-H: Danny Hebert / Director Piggot / Alexandria

Danny Hebert

They didn't let me in to see my little girl until the following morning. One of the bureaucrats had told me after I'd gotten up that she'd already agreed to an offer from the Director's office for the Wards and that I could just sign the contract now if I wanted but I told him to shove off and that I was going to talk to Taylor. I was certainly going to agree with her about joining the Wards, I'd always thought that's what she should have done from the start, but first things first.

"You're all right?" were the first words out of my mouth as I came in and saw her lying in her hospital bed. Another goddamned hospital bed. And another time it took a miracle healer just to keep her alive at all. Why did the world keep doing this to us?

"Full recovery," Taylor replied and I didn't so much sit in the bedside chair as slump into it at those words. "Panacea said it should just take one or two more sessions before its all fixed."

Taylor looked back up me at with her little sincere smile. The same smile she'd been constantly giving me all along, and especially since she'd triggered. The smile that said she was okay, that I didn't need to worry about her so much, that she was taking care of herself and she'd be fine.

The smile that I'd been too stupid to notice hadn't been remotely sincere for over a whole year before it all happened, and that I was still afraid to let myself believe in even now. She'd been kidding herself and me for so long that she'd been OK when she wasn't, she'd never let herself ask for help for so long until it was too late, and now she had parahuman powers and everything was changing for her so much? How could she really know whether she was OK or not, especially when it wasn't just facing high school dangers now but life-threatening situations? She was only fifteen!

My God, even her high school had turned into a life-threatening situation and that was before she'd even gotten powers in the first place! I'd aged at least a year for every week since her trigger event, and just when I thought things might be going to go all right when Taylor said she'd ask Dragon for some cape advice first and then suddenly there's this horrible kidnapping?

No, it was my job to look after my baby and keep her from getting hurt. And to protect her from herself, that goddamned determination she had to always try to go it alone and then let herself get hurt. My letting her run free and look after herself unsupervised before had been what had led to the entire Winslow disaster. And I'd done that letting her run free because I hadn't been doing my job, I'd been so wrapped up in myself after Annette and wrapped up in things that didn't really matter compared to what I should have been doing-

I fought down an urge to crush the bedrail or punch the wall as I took a deep breath and directed my anger away and down, away from me and away from the person I was talking to, just like the counselor had always recommended. To 'virtually' let it out on something inoffensive and inanimate in my line of sight so that it didn't risk exploding out on someone real.

"They said you'd talked to someone about joining the Wards?" I asked, focusing again.

"The Director came in last night and explained why it would be a good idea now," Taylor said.

"I'm glad you're finally seeing sense on the topic," I told her with firmness, and her own expression firmed up.

"I'm rolling with the punches, Dad, not 'seeing sense'." Taylor told me curtly. "This was not how it was supposed to go-"

"That's the thing about real life, young lady!" I came back. "It never goes how it's supposed to go! That's why you need to-"

"Do you think I don't know that, Dad?" she said sadly. "After all this?"

Oh, that was just hitting the below the belt. Why did she always have to be so stubb-

"Dad," she continued plaintively. "I don't want to fight." She sighed and continued more softly. "And this whole thing is a messy mixed bag anyway."

"I agree," I said, breathing out heavily. "And I don't want to fight either but-"

"What did you tell me about 'but'?" she said with a tiny bit of her cheek returning, her cheek from way back. Back before that damned car crash and before Emma had gone crazy.

"The proper punctuation for a sentence ending with 'but' is to put a period right before the 'B'," I repeated, saying the old maxim we'd always used to shut down Taylor's grade-school explanations of why her latest cookie jar expedition or unauthorized outing with Emma or all that wasn't really that bad, honest. It really wasn't fair when children actually remembered what you'd told them and then tossed it back at you when they needed it for ammunition. Even if they were-

"Okay, okay," I said, and waved for her to continue.

Taylor stopped to compose her thoughts for a long pause, as if she was trying to find just the perfect words, and finally went with. "Analyzing how we both ended up here and why I was vulnerable to Coil's kidnapping is something we're going to have to do eventually, so that we don't do whatever went wrong again the next time we face the same type of problem."

"That makes sense," I agreed, my thoughts immediately leaping to workplace accident reviews and compensations claims I'd had to help adjudicate. "But you want to do it later, not now, when we're not both so-"

"So much, yeah," she said. "And in the category of decisions that do need to be made right now…?"

"You've already made it," I said, nodding along with her. "The Wards."

"Yeah. I mean, maybe it won't be so bad. I can hope."

I sat and thought over how many times I'd seen that one work out before.

"If it does start to 'go bad' then you promise you'll tell me this time, all right? After Winslow-"

The sudden smile that broke out on her face as soon as I'd started to say that made me think that maybe, just maybe, I'd started doing my job again after all.

-and then I thought about what my job was. My paying job, that is.

"Did you sign anything yet?" I asked her urgently.

"Nope. All verbal," she agreed.

"Good." I said with heartfelt relief. "Because as much as I want you in the Wards, I also want to read every line of that paperwork before so much as a drop of ink touches paper. And not just me, but whoever in the Dockworkers office I can get to help pro bono. Because negotiating employee contracts and making sure my people don't get taken advantage of by the corporations - or the government - is what your Dad does, remember?"

And the smile that one got me could have lit up the world.

Director Piggot

God, I was exhausted. My dialysis meant that I had to worry about fatigue syndromes anyway and that was before all-nighters like this erupted. Let alone all the critical decisions I'd had to make in the past hours…

I lay in my bed in my quarters on the Rig, staring at the ceiling and suffering through the damnable 'too tired to sleep' that every soldier was familiar with. As always happened when this occurred, my thoughts kept going back and back and rechecking my recent decisions, examining my process, looking for overlooked clues or failure factors.

Of course, being as fatigued as I was meant that this was just another way of counting sheep. Except in the very rare cases that being in a half-dream state enhanced intuition, which were far rarer than fiction would have you believe, then thinking while chronic-fatigued was exactly as productive as thinking while drunk. If I hadn't had any useful insights while I was still capable then I almost certainly wasn't going to have them now.

Still, going through my recent memories was far better than going through my older ones. And so I left myself drift and waited for my exhaustion to finally turn into rest, and as I did so my thoughts kept coming back to the most confusing thing of the entire affair.

Thomas Calvert's big reveal as the villain Coil? I was still confused as to what could have made that self-obsessed psychopath trigger after Ellisburg if he hadn't triggered in that fucking mess, but the rest of his deal was merely a huge goddamned shock and not an actual surprise. Its not as if I hadn't known that the fucker was pure walking evil from the day I'd first met him. The day he actually bragged to me about fragging his own squad leader during Ellisburg, as if that made him special and not just a mad animal. Nothing short of a direct order from Director Costa-Brown's office would have made me accept his 'services' as a 'special consultant' to my PRT branch and I made yet another a note to check those files tomorrow to see if they'd tell me which Senator he must have blackmailed to get that contract.

An entire goddamned supervillain Bond base underneath my city? In hindsight not shocking at all. He'd hidden a hardened underground bunker underneath a corporation set up for the purpose of selling hardened underground bunkers, and cleverly disguised it as a hardened underground bunker. I gave Calvert a minimal point for having read the 'Purloined Letter' – very minimal – and kept listing.

The degree of infiltration into my office? Just the few I'd already found made me want to vomit and even with Coil's files to accelerate that process I was still dreading how much further it might go from there. But I'd goddamn well turn them out root and branch. I'd already bypassed HQ to get directly in touch with Armstrong down in Boston and ask him to send at least fifty of his own people to help with the mole hunt, boots on the ground and striking while the iron was hot. Let the suits up top cry about procedure later, I'd get forgiveness rather than permission. And if I got no forgiveness at all then hell with it, if they wanted to relieve me for this mess or how I had to fix it then I'd go out swinging for the fences. So no, the mole hunt? Appalling, but not puzzling.

Taylor Hebert. What was that young woman made of?

My crime scene people were still arguing over how much of that trail she'd cut through the base was real, how much was them reading too much into what wasn't there, how much had been pure luck and how much had been a plan, but even the most conservative estimates required her to start from practically naked in a secure anti-Tinker box that made my high-grade confinement cells look like a Holiday Inn, somehow fake a cardiac event that had fooled an experienced nurse who had her hooked up to hospital-grade diagnostic equipment, then compromise every single internal network in the base with just a cell phone – the biggest argument against admitting her to the Wards would be putting that talent right here on the Rig and on our internal systems, but I had to place faith in Armsmaster's ability to out-Tinker even a teen Tinker prodigy…

Two, maybe four or six veteran mercs taken down before they barely even known they were being hit. We'd confirmed the job she'd done on the two men found lying nearest to where Velocity had made contact with her, the mercs who'd each taken a double-tap to their vests smack dab in their X-rings from a girl who had zero record of having touched a pistol before and all in the instant of time they'd have been blinded by their own flash-bang which had somehow prematured in mid-air right inside the door - I'd have been going good to make those takedowns back then.

And Annie Oakley herself with a laser sight couldn't have hit that fucking flash-bang in mid-air. Had to have been some kind of proximity detonator, like what the Marines used to make car bombs premature before they'd actually reach the gates…

It really said something about Taylor's whole sequence that night that the stunt at the end with the improvised neutron bomb was one of the things making the most sense in hindsight. And I still had a chuckle over the console…

But the most puzzling thing about this kid was how she kept reacting to things. Before and after. She just-

Capes were damaged. The nature of trigger events meant that they'd inevitably have psychological issues, issues that never seemed to really get better for any of them no matter how much the psychs tried. The best you could hope for was high-functioning cases that channeled it into mostly useful directions, like Armsmaster or Miss Militia…

But Taylor was civil and entirely rational even during situational stress that would have put my best tactical teams into beast mode. Her conversation was full of de-escalation phrases and tension relievers like a trained negotiator's, except with her it was intuitive as if that was just her nature. Like most teenagers she wouldn't budge on things she wanted, but unlike most of them she didn't act like always pushing back was the only way she knew how to hold a position…

Capes they weren't the heroes that the Protectorate and the PRT wanted everyone to believe they were, either. I knew that. I knew that I was sworn to helping maintain an illusion that I didn't remotely believe in because the only solution that anyone had come up with for a world gone mad was to take that lie and sell it so hard that hopefully they would believe it.

But I really doubted that they did, or ever would. I'd seen the truth that day. For all that capes puffed themselves up, when push came to shove they'd only fight if they thought they could win, and if it was your life or theirs then you could kiss your sweet ass goodbye because it wasn't going be theirs. Our cape so-called support had been the first people to cut and run in Ellisburg. Even fucking Calvert had stood his post longer than they had before breaking.

But here comes Taylor and she's thrown alone into hell and without a moment's hesitation she just stares down the goddamned nightmare and then fucks it in the eye socket. She'd grabbed everything she had and everything she'd made and kept firing it into the waves and waves of opposition and it kept her alive long enough that even bleeding out on the floor and the gun at her head she'd been still in the fight right up to the moment the cavalry finally came…

Capes cared about you only when they could, and when really up against it they took care of number one first instead of taking one for the team.

But while what Taylor had done in the base could have just been a cornered rat trying to keep its hide intact, any kid who'd pass up a free shot at a $25 million judgement in court for a measly $250,000 settlement and the rest for school improvement? To try and help clean up the shithole that had helped torture her? To give up a pile of free money to try and bail out all the same kids who'd abandoned her?

To hell with all of Armsmaster's hyperventilating over the alleged 'socially maladjusted tendencies' of anyone who'd build a homebrew neutron bomb, he couldn't be right on that score for this to make any sense. If it wasn't for her Tinkering you'd sometimes wonder if Taylor Hebert were even a cape…

I finally closed my eyes, and as I drifted off I thought about a young Lady who'd once gone to Ellisburg.

Alexandria

"Thomas Calvert is dead," I said.

The news had come in shortly before I'd had to leave for the scheduled meeting, so after we'd handled the scheduled agenda I'd brought the matter up as it was Coil who had been the primary subject of our parahuman feudalism experiment in Brockton Bay.

"What were the circumstances?" Number Man asked me, his being here and doing preparatory work this morning having put him behind me in the news cycle for a change. "And is it confirmed?"

"What's left of him is currently in the morgue in the Boston PRT office, and DNA, MRI, and dental work all matches," I said, pulling up the relevant reports on everyone's display. "Although as you can see-"

"What kind of power does that sort of damage?" Eidolon asked, staring at the grisly imagery.

"You don't recall from Behemoth engagements?" Number Man asked. "Given the available context, I would say this was either Tinkertech or an industrial accident. Because that's not a parahuman power exposure, that's acute radiation syndrome."

"Somebody detonated a neutron bomb in Brockton Bay?" Doctor Mother asked incredulously. "And you didn't bring this up first?"

"Some teenaged girl who'd Triggered as a Tinker two weeks ago took exception to Coil's press-gang," I said, "and chose to express her displeasure by improvising a hand-held suicide device of some kind and irradiating the entire room with it. Coil was by all appearances attempting to flee and seek medical aid from Blasto, who would have been the nearest available bio-Tinker plausibly available for hire."

"Possible but very unlikely that would have helped him," Number Man said.

"So the whole experiment's down the drain just because one kid went 'Carrie'?" Eidolon said. "How did we not see this one coming?"

"I have to prioritize my time," Contessa replied tonelessly, "and Coil was not a sufficient priority in the time frame under discussion."

"Overall Path divergence as a result?" Doctor Mother asked.

"Minimal, Contessa replied with mild interest. "The experiment was a significant hope of ours for the aftermath, but not a necessity for the primary goal." And then she sat back in the way that signified she had nothing to say on the matter.

"I'll start sanitizing the data trails that could potentially lead to us," Number Man said. "You can do the same internally to the PRT, of course."

"Actually, it occurs to me we can salvage the experiment," I replied. "Parahuman feudalism would be important in the post-Entity world, and I am reluctant to abandon our proof of concept so soon."

"Continue it with who?" Eidolon said. "Because even I can't raise the dead."

"Remember that there had been two other potential candidates already native to Brockton Bay that we had been considering before Calvert appeared on the scene," I reminded him. "Marquis was Birdcaged and it turned out there were Path concerns about potentially interfering with that, so we did not. But-"

"Oh you have got to be kidding!" Eidolon shot back heatedly. "There's a reason we didn't just go ahead back then after losing Marquis, remember?"

"I'm sorry," I said in a voice as cold as liquid nitrogen. "But when we founded Cauldron and swore that we would do whatever was necessary to save as many Earths as we could, that to that one single objective we pledged our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor, and our immortal souls, was there some sort of unspoken 'But not if it means being tacky about it?' exemption that I'd missed? I will grant that there were reasons he was not our first choice, but might I remind you that our first choice is now dead?"

"Kaiser, for all of his organizational ability and current advantage of position, does still have certain significant flaws," Number Man pointed out.

"And Coil didn't?" I said. "We're not in the business of making saints here."

"We're not in the business of making the next Hitler either!" Eidolon objected.

"That's exactly why he would be useful here," I replied. "As you are demonstrating for us right now, the Nazi ideology is one of the single most polarizing ideologies that exists. Kaiser cannot abandon it without abandoning his power base, but so long as he clings to it he cannot hope to gain popular acceptance on the larger scale in any scenario short of an outright post-apocalypse."

"At which point questions of even remotely conventional ethics would already be forfeit," Doctor Mother acknowledged. "And so it's a neatly a self-containing experiment. If parahuman feudalism is a viable concept at all, then with a minimum of setup work we can give the Empire Eighty-Eight a fair opportunity to demonstrate that by seeing if they can take control of Brockton Bay. And yet they will never have any serious hope to leverage that power substantially beyond a single parahuman city-state and out into a large regional or national scenario because…"

"Because except for their own few goose-stepping fanboys, everybody hates Nazis," Eidolon said. "And once they've succeeded on the proof of concept we don't have to let them stay succeeded, do we? Everybody would be screaming for the Triumvirate to come down anyway."

"We'll have to stall long enough to make sure that it is a viable lasting conquest and not merely a blitzkrieg," I pointed out, "but yes, the anticipated endgame even in the case of experiment success is an eventual day of reckoning for Kaiser. He just gets to have the Bay for a while first. So, is the proposal on the table?"

Doctor Mother nodded. "It certainly sounds viable enough to have Number Man and yourself start a formal study of its feasibility, and if that checks out then yes. We'll do it."

"We'll need to study fast," I pointed out. "If we are going to do it then 'Director Costa-Brown' needs to start putting the pieces in place while the immediate post-Coil investigation is still in progress."

"If they are pieces you can move back later should the proposal not check out, then just go ahead and start moving them now," the Doctor said. "Anyone else? Very well, meeting adjourned."

Arc Two Concludes

Author's Note: And that's a wrap! We've shown the aftermath, we've gotten peeks into character's heads and motivations, we've start the family reconciliation, and we've foreshadowed at least one of the main antagonists of Arc Three.

And yes, the whole 'there were prior candidates for the experiment before Coil came along' thing is my invention, but its a plausible fit into an empty part of the backstory. At least in my opinion. Seriously, who the heck would pick Coil as first choice for anything? When I think 'stable parahuman warlord candidate' Marquis is one of the first names on that list... and for all the fact that he's a motherfucking Nazi, Kaiser's one of the second.

So they didn't use Marquis because by the time they were ready to move he was Birdcaged, and they didn't use Kaiser because they were hoping for a better candidate than Swastika Man and it was simpler to procrastinate a bit back then, and then the experiment is finally a "now" thing with Coil and its just about to get to the good part and whoops, Coil just died.

Eh, fuck it, swap in the guy whose resume we sent back last time. It's a patch, its not supposed to be perfect!

That's what Cauldron is thinking right now.

And y'know, Alexandria does have a legitimate point. Legitimately awful, but still a point. 'Okay, people, considering the full list of epic crimes against humanity we've already all done here without losing a minute's sleep, can anybody say with a straight face that this is our one uncrossable line? Seriously?'

And yes, Emily Piggot alone with her thoughts in the middle of the (well, day, as she's crashing from an all-nighter). Useful to note where her head is right now, plus, also gets in more on what's happening in the Bay immediately post-Coil.

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

Check out my (on hiatus) Worm fanfic, A Ghost of a Chance!

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Threadmarks Evolution 3.1 New

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Jul 18, 2019

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Evolution 3.1

It was several weeks before I actually got to meet the Wards.

One of the reasons for the delay was of course so that the that the public reveal of Brockton Bay's newest Ward would have no apparent connection to the Fortress Incident, as it was now being referred to. The revelation that Coil, once thought to be one of the city's minor parahuman ganglords, had actually been a major player with significant underground forces in Brockton Bay and had built a Bond villain base so hardened that it had taken some of Dragon's most powerful technology to crack it open had certainly made a major public splash. A splash that fortunately been so large that the revelation that it had actually been a rescue operation for me was able to be invisibly buried beneath it. So while I'd been quite thoroughly outed to the PRT, Coil's now-confirmed death and the total collapse of his organization plus Coil's own internal compartmentalization meant I still should have a valid secret ID as far as anyone else was concerned.

The arrests of the Undersiders concurrently with the Fortress Incident was seen as having tangential relation to the whole affair at best, with the 'failed industrial espionage job that had led the PRT to Coil/Fortress' theory on PHO being the one that had the most popular acceptance. Yes, the PRT had gotten them all. Tattletale had of course been taken during the base assault itself, but Bitch/Hellhound had been wrapped up shortly before they'd hit the base when she'd made herself too visible on one of her anti-dogfighting raids in Empire 88 territory at the exact wrong time. Apparently her teammates had left her so far out of the loop on their 'special job' for Coil that she hadn't even known what they were doing, simply that they were off on a mission that didn't include her. So she'd gone out on her own to take care of some private business and the Protectorate had taken her right off the street.

The Undersiders had really hosed themselves with what they'd done to me. And I'm going to admit, watching karma crash down on them step by step was very satisfying. Still, I'd had done my best to make sure I didn't exult in it too much. Helping deliver just punishment for someone's crimes was one thing, but going 'Ha-ha, I can get away with being cruel to you and rejoice in your misery! ' was outright pulling an Emma. And I was calling a big fat nope on doing that! Some enemies, such as Zion or the Endbringers, deserved absolutely no mercy from anyone and certainly weren't going to get any from me. But the world wasn't exclusively divided into people who were on my side and things to ruthlessly crush.

Which is why when I'd made the original file upload to Dragon from the heart of Coil's lair I'd made sure to highlight some particular items for her attention. Of course many of those things were items of immediate tactical relevance, such as exact base schematics and composition and the base alert procedures for knowing how many guards they'd be up against and where they were supposed to be. But several highlights were things that I'd felt were simply too likely to be overlooked by the PRT in the rush if their noses weren't rubbed in it, such as Rachel Lindt's special needs situation.

Because as much as I was really not happy with the Undersiders for what they'd done to me and disgusted at what they'd been willing to already do to others in general, that didn't mean I had to go overboard about it. And even if I didn't want to reveal my meta-knowledge or my unique perspective on the situation, if I was going to be handing a datadump to the authorities anyway then I could at least do good by making sure it was handed over in the right order and with the right emphasis. And it's not as if anyone reviewing the case would find it at all curious I'd taken a moment out to go 'Please pay special attention to the stuff that will help you catch the people who actually kidnapped me!' It's not like I didn't have a perfectly understandable grudge.

But I'd done my best to get and by great good fortune had actually succeeded at getting Rachel the most lenient treatment of them all, both for her total uninvolvement in the breaking of 'the unwritten rules' and because she was seen as mentally unable to stand trial. The PRT psychologists were of course recommending prolonged confinement but also recommended giving her a modified therapy approach involving someone who really understood canine psychology, as well as allowing her at least limited access to therapy dogs as a reward/privilege in return for her continued cooperation. Even despite the obvious downsides of giving her access to dogs. I didn't know how or where her story would end, but at least she had a chance now.

The nice thing about Coil's positively German-esque obsession with record keeping is that there was a valid excuse for almost anything being noted in there, including full psych profiles of the Undersiders and what Coil had seen as their most useful control levers. Which is how I'd also made sure Dragon and the PRT knew the whole scoop behind Aisha Laborn's crappy situation, the special needs of her case that she wasn't having met, and the abusive neglectful guardians that the system had failed her in escaping. And exactly how Grue's desperation over that had allowed Coil to steer him around like a hand puppet. Not that I felt much if any mercy towards him for how utterly stupid he'd been in his "plans" (by courtesy so called) to "fix" his sister's situation, but the fact that he'd been such an epic failure at doing it himself didn't mean that it wasn't something that still needed doing.

For that matter, only Coil's promise of a payoff in the form of finalizing a custody transfer to Brian was what had finally gotten him to agree to help kidnap me, even if he'd believed right up until the moment I'd revealed my abilities that it had been merely a play to get a lever on the Dockworker's Union by kidnapping the perfectly mundane daughter of its hiring manager. So its not like Aisha's name wouldn't have leapt right out at the investigators during the follow-up to my case anyway, I'd just further emphasized the context.

Which is why despite her situation not earning Grue much if any leniency on his sentence, Aisha was at least now out of there and into a foster home with people who'd worked with ADHD children before and under the supervision of somebody in Social Services who actually did their job. And even if that had taken special privilege and special circumstances to invoke instead of being what all children in her situation should be able to expect from the government, just because I couldn't make the world perfect today didn't mean I was excused in walking past someone in immediate need because I was 'too busy' on a long-range Utopia. Or in going 'If everybody can't have it right now, why bother giving her any?' Even if all of John's memories had painted Aisha Laborn out to be an amoral brat without much redeeming feature, I still had empathy for children who'd gotten into bad situations where all the people who should be helping them weren't helping at all. And so, I'd done what I could.

Heck, even if I had been willing to be a Hard Woman making Hard Choices about it I'd still have done Aisha that solid. The last thing I wanted was a homicidally-enraged Imp shanking me on a street corner somewhere and me dying without even knowing how or why. Her power would have made for a terrifying assassin had she merely been given a different motivation, so if I could head off that trigger event before it even got started then I certainly would.

Oh yes, they'd caught up to Grue and Regent both within a day. The address of the Undersiders' current lair had been in Coil's files, after all. Regent was more than experienced enough at living as a fugitive to deduce that they'd been blown the instant the first public announcement of Coil's capture had been made, and so he'd immediately given Grue the warning and then grabbed his bugout bag and headed out on his own. Not that that had helped him, because Dragon had taken my kidnapping a little personally. And so she'd been willing to donate enough of her time to her no-sparrow-shall-fall act re: public camera searches to make sure neither of the remaining Undersiders were getting anywhere. When she'd caught Regent on a security feed from the Amtrak station, her tipoff had had a PRT fast-response team already waiting for him at the next stop.

Picking up Grue had been even easier. The first place he'd gone was of course to where his sister was living, to ask her to come with him. The fact that she'd agreed to hadn't saved him from an additional charge of kidnapping on top of mine, because taking a minor out against the wishes of her legal guardian with intent to cross a state line with her was still kidnapping even with the minor's enthusiastic cooperation.

Tattletale had managed to escape additional charges for her non-cooperation in defusing the self-destruct because the official story was, of course, that she had cooperated. Its not like the PRT could actually write into the official record that they'd handcuffed the stupid bitch to a console. But as disappointing as it was, the fact remained that they'd gotten away with stuff like that in the past before and would get away with it again, and had gotten away with it this time. And yes, these were the same people I was now going to go work for/work with. I'd already known it would be a compromise solution when I'd first put it into the contingency plans, let alone when I'd finally agreed to it.

Also the handcuffs had been my idea in the first place so I'd really be a hypocrite if I tried registering a moral objection to it now. But for the record, I'm still blaming the radiation sickness for that one.

Still, all the charges Tattletale was legitimately up for combined with her inability to just take a knee at the end and make a peace gesture without being forced to it had drowned out any possible goodwill her situation might otherwise have given her. And had left her still facing a long long stretch, even without terrorism charges on top. Kinda hard for you to plead being originally recruited at gunpoint when you were visibly living large and actively cooperating without any guns involved for quite a time, right up to the moment when Dragon and Vista had done their thing. Or when you hadn't tried to turn Coil in at any earlier time, once you'd had knowledge of which PRT officers were honest and which were Coil's… or for that matter could simply have hopped a train to Boston or New York and turned herself in there. Its not like somebody with a Thinker rating like hers could get away with pleading 'But I hadn't thought of that!', even when by all appearances she actually hadn't. Ah, Tattletale, you were the dumbest smart person I've ever met and never wish to meet again.

And so to cut a long story short the Undersiders except Rachel were all facing long prison sentences, and Rachel a psychiatric sentence. And while none of the others were even considered for it, Regent had gotten the full Birdcage treatment because his prior activities as Hijack had meant at least two severe enough strikes already on his record to add to his third strike on me. Ouch. I can't say it wasn't legitimate, but still, ouch.

But enough about the Undersiders, back to talking about me. Another reason for the delay re: me meeting the Wards had of course been the negotiations prompted by my father's promise to get the best deal for me that he possibly could. I'd done my best to refocus him onto what was most important to me (lightening up a little on the Tinker restrictions, allowing me to continue my special access to Dragon, etc.) as opposed to what was most important to him (safety guarantees, fewer hours, higher salary and benefits, a better percentage on my merchandising – hey, Protectorate heroes got action figures, Wards got action figures, and that meant we got royalties on those action figures, future commercial rights for my Tinkertech, and so forth).

I was pretty surprised when Mr. Barnes turned out to be the lawyer that my dad had been able to get to help us, pro bono, to review the fine details of the contract and make sure we weren't being taken advantage of in the fine print. I wasn't quite how to feel about that, to be honest. But him and my dad had been friends, and I chose to believe that Emma's father might feel that he also had some amends to make, both to Dad and to me, for his own past failures at being a dad to Emma.

Also, since I'd already put a charge into Lawyer way back when to make sure we weren't being taken advantage of on the out-of-court settlement with the school district, that allowed me to discreetly review Mr. Barnes' contributions to our case and make sure he was sincere. As it turned out, he was actually trying his best to help us. Whew.

And a charge into PRT Bureaucracy synergized with that and my other already-existing skills to be able to give my dad intelligent and helpful commentary throughout the process without doing more than looking like I was just paying close attention and being naturally smart. And this was what my father legitimately did for a living and he was damned good at it in his own right, so we did all right for ourselves. Even despite the the fact that the PRT was certainly not going to just give us the moon for free no matter how much they'd rather have Neutron Bomb Girl working with them rather than running free across the landscape doing God knows what, we got the best deal we could reasonably afford even if certain prior concerns meant that the Tinker review cycle would still be a thing for me. It turned out that many of the things said about said review cycle on PHO and elsewhere actually had been exaggerations. Not all of them, but certainly some of them.

So, despite my dad actually taking a leave of absence from the Dockworkers' so he could spend eight hours a day in conference rooms making the PRT's legal department desperately wish that Danny Hebert had been a hardware store owner instead of a veteran union negotiator, things were eventually wrapped up. And to be fair, its not as if the PRT were morally offended by Wards parents who'd actually read contracts and get legal advice about them before signing anything, however frustrating the process could get. One of the PRT legal team who'd misinterpreted my concern as impatience had even taken me aside to give me some friendly advice that I should see all of this as proof that my dad really cared about me and not just see this as an obstacle between me and my going out in costume right away. Which was nice of them even if they'd completely misunderstood what was going on.

Then there was the time I spent with the PR consultants. While I'd gone in with the determination to willingly accept any cape name and theming offered that was marginally less obnoxious than 'Princess Butterfly' or similar absurdities, their collective sigh of relief at "Oh my God finally one of the kids listens to us without needing hours and hours of beating sense into their heads first." earned me enough goodwill that I'd been able to get them to look at my costume sketches right off the bat instead of them having me pick one out of their scrap books. A single charge in Visual Design had of course let me make some really good sketches to offer them, so I walked out with their sanction for a so-dark-blue-it-was-looked-black tech-themed reinforced bodysuit with dull silver 'circuitry' all over it, woven in an irregular pattern that suggested both microprocessors and Tron lines without being too obvious about either. They'd even accepted my proposed Tinkertech feature that let me swap out the colors for a reverse-palette of dull silver with dark-blue highlights. In fact, seeing that feature prompted the senior consultant to suggest a cape name of "Binary" for me, and while it was hardly the flashiest cape name ever I'd decided that I liked it. It had a nice solid sound, it made sense as a name for a Tinker who'd shown a lot of handiness with computers, and it wasn't an immediate invitation to bad jokes.

Of course I'd originally made that color scheme and those switchable day and night modes as a way to have my costume be useful as digital pattern-disruption urban camouflage, but if I could do that and also make it look enough like a superhero art project to leave PR completely ignorant of why I'd really picked it and get a decent cape name out of it in the bargain, then we could call that one a win-win.

Which is how Binary of the Brockton Bay Wards would be making her public debut in just a few days.

Another thing that had demanded quite a bit of my time during those weeks was, of course, getting back in shape. Amy had given me that promised follow-up a day after she'd saved my life (again) and even done her best to clean out a lot of the damage I'd done to my system with adrenal overstress and not allowing sufficient recovery time after the first near-death experience, but some things simply needed rest, calories, and scientifically-optimized exercise. Still, I had almost a month to work in and by the end of that month I could have been Winslow's star jock just for the asking, notably above even Sophia (who had been an exceptional female athlete even if she'd been utterly horrid as a person, let's be fair) in many respects. My build meant that I'd have to worry about situations where overwhelming momentum or mass were still a factor, and I would just not get around that without using technological boosts, but the next thugs who tried to come at me would still not get off anywhere near as easily as Coil's mooks had.

Because in addition to my physical conditioning I'd also given myself a notable upgrade to my martial arts skills, straight-up dumping 2 charges into Martial Arts as a comprehensive broad-based course in all the fundamentals and a good solid understanding of design principles. I might have made it three charges except that my new life philosophy was "If I'm caught without my tools then I have already lost the first round", so outside of the necessary rehab I was not making PT my highest time priority. I'd certainly needed to correct my mistakes of trying to use just generic PRT CQC training and my prana-bindu boosts to do all the work instead of tailoring a combat style specifically to my needs, body type, and physical stats, but now I had all the knowledge necessary to do that and could work on refining mastery into grandmastery later.

Even with it all mostly having been various flavor of quiet setup work, the time between the Fortress Incident and my scheduled Wards debut had hardly been idle, after all.

Because when it came to the actual meat of the matter, my Tinkering, I first had to finish making my costume. I couldn't wear what wasn't there, after all. So among all the other things I'd needed to make time for during those several weeks was both Tinkering and then going through meetings about my Tinkering. The PRT had been fairly generous in fronting me some resources for an initial set of protective gear so I could at least get my first costume and set of body armor done.

Regarding the review process, I'd held back a bit on my first round of submits to things that they would have trouble finding any reason to object to or that they already knew I could build. It's not like they didn't want a Ward hitting the street with really good body armor, after all. So I gave them things such as form-fitting low-profile impact-absorbing body-armor, upgraded ballistic cloth, a full-head-covering armored helmet with advanced faceplate HUD, a production-model version of my zap sticks (two of them in paired leg holsters), a utility belt for further 'approved' gizmo expansion, etc, etc.

Now, revealing that I could make Tinkertech that was mass-producible and maintainable by mundanes would have freaked everyone out, but fortunately the Worm v1 CYOA gave you full control over your powers. Including the ability to switch any of them on and off, or even to dial-a-yield their intensity, and to do so selectively. So I simply took the feature that anti-black-boxed my Tinkertech as a matter of course and cranked it back down so that all my work would be partially black-boxed. Other Tinkers could at least get the vague gist and some clear pieces and principles here and there, and there would be those rare moments of clarity where it would make sense even to conventional science, but nothing that fell outside the various outliers that previously known Tinkers had already established. Dragon's prior total comprehension of my submits to her would be credited as both a lucky break and the fact that Dragon's power was already understood as the ability to comprehend and reverse-engineer lots of other Tinkertech.

The review board had straight-up rejected the zap rifle, though, even after I'd demonstrated 150% safety and guaranteed non-lethality was built into the design, simply because the image of a Ward running around with something looking like an assault rifle was an outright NOPE. But I'd at least gotten them to agree to letting me put zap beams into my forearm launchers, so I still had them. When I had some time later to figure out a good excuse for coming up with an effective and safe paralysis drug that could be dart-injected, and hopefully get them to approve combat pharmaceuticals beyond my already demonstrated chem sprayer, then I'd add armor-piercing drug darts to my forearm launchers too. I certainly had no plans to go looking for Lung, to name just one person a chemically-based quick incapacitator would be useful for, but that didn't mean I'd have a guarantee of not finding him anyway. It's not like that hadn't already happened with Coil!

I'd also gotten them to agree to officially sending the zap rifle specs to Dragon to see if they could be made into a viable PRT general-issue non-lethal weapon, as had already been pulled off in the past with an obscure Tinker's invention that she'd been able to refine into mass-production containment foam. So, that was at least the first brick out of that wall…

I was a little annoyed at my particular restrictions in Dragon's case. Not that I hadn't intended my original association with her to be a huge public sponsorship for me anyway, but thanks to the security concerns both surrounding the Fortress Incident in general and Director Piggot's point in particular that letting it be widely known that I was a possible hostage to use against Dragon would be an epically bad idea, I was basically forbidden from telling anyone who didn't already know about our connection.

Which meant no public crediting for any work I did with her, no open Tinker collabs, and virtually no one brought into the loop who wasn't already there. We'd managed to successfully argue that I should at least be allowed to tell the Wards because the alternative was me continually lying by omission to people who were supposed to be my teammates and the epically bad team synergy that could come from that, plus them all being supposed to be security-cleared and NDA'ed anyway. But at the moment the circle of trust re: 'Dragon's secret apprentice' was being kept narrow enough that it would be notably more secret than it was apprentice.

Look, I could deal with it just so long as Dragon was still paying serious attention to my contributions, which God bless her she entirely was. These projected Endbringer-killers certainly weren't going to build themselves and I didn't imagine I'd have much luck getting them authorized for building in the Rig's workshop either.

Not that I'd shown her any Endbringer-killers just yet, I first had to get her believing in me more. Right now I was helping her with her Endbringer tracking program, and since between my Computer Programming and my Endbringer Physiology knowledge I could have done the job by myself in a few days I'd certainly be able to wow her socks off by having brilliant insights that helped us finish the job by the end of February. It still wouldn't be a perfect Endbringer attack prediction program simply because the sensor grid to all the necessary data around the world to make it perfect didn't physically exist, but it would give warnings at least as good as her canon version had. And once that program was up and proving a success, then it would be time to start the serious anti-Endbringer collab.

And speaking of collabs, since I didn't want to give myself away as an Everything Tinker just yet I'd held off on actually putting any movement powers such as a flight harness into my gear. Kid Win already had working antigrav tech for his hover platform, so once I was officially in as a Ward I could just "Tinker collab" with him and hey, it turns out that if we both put our heads together we can miniaturize his antigrav tech for easier use by both him and me. No suspicions, right?

In fact, I hoped to be getting a lot of mileage out of 'Tinker collab! Hey, isn't synergy great?' in the near future as an excuse to how I could keep doing so many things, by apparently conforming to the whole "There is no 'I' in 'team'" ideal they tried to teach kids anyway. Now this all depended on if Kid Win and I could successfully work together, of course, but I wasn't really expecting to find out that all of the meta-knowledge telling me the Wards weren't jerks was just fanon and not canon. Even 'Trust But Verify' assumes some measure of trust first, after all. And I certainly wasn't intending to be anything but nice on my end.

As is, so far I'd managed to successfully convince the PRT that I was "merely" a dual-focus tinker who was still only partly sure of her own specializations but already knew she was really good with computers and quantum computers and also had found herself very able at making protective gear and personal defense options when she'd been thrown headfirst into a threatening situation. Since both dual-focus Tinkers, combat Tinkers, and computer Tinkers were a thing and the exact circumstances of my trigger event would by the PRT's prior experience be highly likely to produce a dual-focus Tinker or a combat-themed Tinker, they had every reason to believe it. Likewise, my 'secondary powers' of mind-over-body and exceptional agility and reflexes for a teenaged girl were tagged as a very minor Brute rating alongside my Tinker rating and considered perhaps a bit odd but hardly a cause for major suspicion, given that 'almost died' trigger events were well-known for producing Brutes.

And I certainly hoped they'd be willing to believe that the radiation bomb was a one-off combination of ultimate desperation and the quantum-mechanics elements of the bomb being a synergy both of my suspected Tinker focuses and not an indication that I actually was a full-on WMD tinker. I'd certainly done all I could in my overall presentation to set up such a belief. Because even though the Director seemed not more than rationally concerned by it and several of the others not even that much, Armsmaster was still quietly freaking out about that radiation bomb. I was just lucky he wasn't the sole voice in my Tinker review process, and that I'd also taken care all of my early submits had been such conservative, sensible, well-documented choices, or else I'd still be stuck arguing about the zap sticks.

Admittedly most Protectorate Tinkers, even underage ones, weren't vetted quite like me but I had to admit that 2000+ rads of hot ionizing death that could far too easily be scaled up to city-frying doomsday weapon wasn't exactly the ideal first impression. My bad! I was really going to have polish the old apple for a while to convince them it would be okay to ease up, but I could do that.

Now, given that part of the Wards contract was that the PRT was allowed to do unscheduled home visits to check for unauthorized Tinkering in the basement because not even rocks were stupid enough to believe that the kids wouldn't try at least once and the PRT certainly wasn't, and we hadn't been able to negotiate that clause away despite all our efforts… well, I intended to be able to get an off-site workshop set up somewhere once I'd cleared out my current to-do list a little more. For right now I was concentrating on gaming the system and not going full outlaw on it. Everything was a case of juggling priorities right now, after all.

But given that Armsmaster had already twice used his inspection privileges just in the past couple of weeks to come around and scan the house looking for any signs of unlogged Tinkering, which was far more than the usual frequency of such visits? Yeah, that meant not even trying for any basement factory for me just yet. Unexpected and certainly unwelcome, but I'd just have to find a way to deal with it. And it's not that I was actually forbidden to Tinker in my own basement, I just wasn't allowed to hide separate projects from the PRT. "Just".

Honestly, while I hadn't expected to immediately make an awesome first impression with Armsmaster given his nature and general sociability neither had I expected that Armsmaster's first reaction to me was to act as if I were guilty until proven innocent of being the second coming of Bakuda. Or given that she wasn't actually a thing in Brockton Bay yet – her recruitment by the ABB hadn't been until towards the end of March in canon and my Wards debut was scheduled for February 18th - the first coming of Bakuda.

But at least I'd managed to put a spike in that.

Worm canon was actually not explicit on the when and where of Bakuda's trigger event, and there was only some vague words from the author on the why. But one of the most popular and consistent Worm fanons was that Bakuda had been named Grace and that she'd triggered due to her ego not being able to accept failing an exam and combined that with epically unhealthy levels of student stress and burnout. And it was actually mostly-confirmed by the author that her first criminal act immediately post-trigger had been trying to hold the campus of Cornell University hostage with bombs in several buildings, and that she'd ended up in Brockton Bay and recruited by the ABB by the end of March. So I had hope that early February was early enough to still be before her trigger event, and that I could head it off.

Because if I could do that, then John's meta-knowledge told me I would clear out the next several months in Brockton Bay. Having taken down Coil so early and completely and the Undersiders all being put away meant I'd already butterflied away such things as the Lung Fight and what that had led to, the Empire-88 Mass Identity Reveal and what that had led to, the arrival of the Travelers in Brockton Bay and thus the Echidna incident and what that had led to, and so forth. Plus, without the existence of Skitter or the Undersiders still being around there would be no Bank Robbery and thus no kick-start to the part of Amy's insanity spiral and what that had led to.

So the major things still left on the canon pain schedule for Brockton Bay in the near future were first the Gang War, which I didn't know a single-point way to avert just yet but I could at least hope that I already had. And the second would be Bakuda's rampage, which I definitely know a single-point way to avert… if I could find her in time. So I'd start at Cornell.

Even from a publicly-accessible wireless hotspot in Brockton Bay, some Tinker-assisted hacking easily put me inside the Cornell University student administration systems. Not long after that a cross-referenced search for female students from Masachusetts (Bakuda canonically had a strong Boston accent) turned up a Grace Koizumi from Boston. A simple dive into her student transcript confirmed that she was an engineering student, that she had multiple notations on her record regarding 'poor interpersonal action' with other students, and that she was still regularly attending class.

Good. Still pre-trigger. Although it clearly won't be long…

Grace's personal computer was plugged into the college LAN for convenience's sake and access to online educational resources, meaning that since I'd already back-hacked through Cornell's Internet gateway I could get in there as well. Going through the hard drive on her computer turned up a rather disturbing impression of diary entries and rants, as the intensely private Grace apparently had nowhere else to vent to. It read exactly like what you'd expect to find in the diary of a school shooter as they were still in the ramp-up to final crazy phase and had yet to crack. Which made sense because that's exactly what the-woman-who-would-be-Bakuda was.

So, praying to God that the stress of being arrested wouldn't make her Trigger even worse, I used my hacked admin account to her computer to start e-mailing some of the death threats she'd made in private to her own diary to the e-mail accounts of the students she'd actually written them about.

Sure enough, my follow-up a couple days later turned up the notation in campus records that a Grace Koizumi had been temporarily withdrawn from the student body as the results of an internal campus investigation had turned up a very disturbing pattern, and medical intervention was noted. Let's hope that the Thorazine they're giving her in the psych ward keeps her from triggering any time soon, if ever. Let's hope the therapy actually works.

Let's hope that with Bakuda at least delayed and hopefully done, and everything else that the downfall of Coil has already prevented, Brockton Bay can get a quiet year at last.

Author's Note: This chapter had already been partly written before I went in for surgery, so even on the meds I was still able to finish it up and get it out. Now I have to get back to the Arc Three overall design, as well as work on my recovery, so, don't expect a follow-up soon.

But at least I'm able to get out Taylor's cape name and identity, a good outline of what her plans for the immediate future (or at least what they will be until and unless some new black swan event blows them up for her, because the first casualty of any battle is always the battle plan), wrap up what's happening with the Undersiders, and throw Bakuda's Birdcaged ass on top of the already immense pile of Stations of the Canon that have just been butterfly bombed into oblivion.

So, enjoy the "cold open" of Arc Three and I hope to see you all when I finally get fully back into the writing zone that I'm still kinda wobbling around the outskirts of.

Oh, and to answer an earlier reader question, Blank only works against hostile uses of Thinker abilities so that's how Taylor keeps her actions from creating too epic a blind spot. If your path and Taylor's aren't really set up to cross in a bad way, you don't get much if any signal interference.

Edited to resolve major continuity error: I blame the meds for having me confuse Cornell University with MIT. As Taylor could not possibly reach the former on a day trip, a much less dramatic and more remote-control solution to the Bakuda problem had to be retconned in. The prior version is now zotzed as if it never was. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Bakuda has no canon first name in canon, let alone a last name, so I just made it up.

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

Check out my (on hiatus) Worm fanfic, A Ghost of a Chance!

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cliffc999

Jul 18, 2019

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cliffc999

cliffc999

Jul 19, 2019

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Evolution 3.2

(Taylor's nightmare is given more detail in the Sidestory "Golden Ending?").

Why did I feel as if it still had not been enough?

My eyes shot open and I realized that I was still in my own bed. My gasp of terror stuck in my throat as Invictus came crashing down, and I didn't release it until I was sure that I'd caught my breath and wouldn't make any noises that might wake Dad up.

It had been that fucking nightmare again.

I'd been having them at least every several nights since I'd first woken up in the hospital. They all had a common theme, one where I abandoned my life and my morals to concentrate on ruthless progress, justifying myself with the rationale that my mission was too important to allow me to take unnecessary risks or delays.

Sometimes I voluntarily sought out Cauldron and immediately volunteered for service as their living weapon, leading to scenarios where we had war across the heavens with indescribable technological terrors at our command and the implied ending was me along with Cauldron's survivors optimally poised to rule the semi-shattered aftermath of civilizations.

Sometimes I joined Coil or the Empire Eighty-Eight, smiling sweetly up at them as they dreamed of using my "young and vulnerable" self and I ended up using them instead via various technological Master effects I'd created, from hypnotics to nanites. I'd eventually make them all all my puppets as I quietly assembled my world-breaking technology behind their corporate fronts. Those generally ended with the implication that Earth-Bet's civilization would continue along superficially as it was. Just with me possessing all the real power, playing both cops and robbers via my pawns while no one could deny me anything.

Sometimes, like in the nightmare I'd just finished, I went for it alone in various flavors of techno-Khepri. I'd find a way to upgrade myself into some sort of post-Singularity being and just tear the Entities from the heavens on my own. Those nightmares usually had collateral damage counts ranging from planetary to indescribable. The most recent one had been an exception in that I'd only killed one man, Armsmaster.

And I didn't know what was worse, the nights where after I awoke I couldn't actually remember the particular Tinkertech theories that I'd been using in my nightmare scenario… or the nights where I could.

But this was also the first time the nightmare had run long enough that it didn't just fade out on a vague dream-ending of Zion dying and an implication of what happened next, but an actual fully detailed aftermath. One that remained as sharp and clear as any dream could, right up until the moment I "died".

So no, I didn't need an Inspired Inventor-given psychology degree to get the message. My subconscious fears were revolving around the sheer immensity of the potential power I'd been granted, the incalculable potential I had to eventually change the world, and my doubts as to whether or not I should.

Every hero Tinker of course told themselves that they wanted to make the world a better place. And there were indeed so many unambiguously good things I could potentially do. Not just things like killing Endbringers or inventing better weapons for the PRT or the police to let them catch more villains, but things like clean energy, pure water, medical tech, etc.

I had potentially unlimited power, which meant that I bore potentially unlimited responsibility. But no even remotely human mind could possibly carry the load of unlimited responsibility without feeling unlimited guilt, and unlimited guilt would drive any remotely human soul to howling madness. Even Invictus would only let you remain a functional broken person, not a well one.

It was a philosophical trap that could only be escaped by consciously accepting a lesser role, to see yourself as just a girl and not a nascent goddess. To believe that a higher power – and I didn't mean ROB – was ordering the universe and that things happened for a reason, and that if you tried your best to be a good person then at worst you wouldn't be too bad.

But that did nothing to stifle that inner voice that kept crying out 'That's just an excuse for you to pretend you're not as strong as you are! You have a responsibility to use all your powers, as long and often as you can, and any failure on your part to do less means that all that potential blood is on your hands!'

Yeah, there was a reason that I'd 'clicked' with Amy Dallon as soon as I'd met her. Because I could empathize. And it was an example of how perversely human minds could work that I could simultaneously accept that Amy was being too hard on herself (if it wasn't her mother being too hard on her) and that there was nothing wrong with her being a finite human being however potentially unlimited her power was. With wishing that she could just take some time to be Amy Dallon and not the all-healing Panacea. Even though every time I told myself the same thing, that I wasn't committing an irredeemable sin by letting myself spend some time being Taylor Hebert rather than Inspired Inventor, I never quite believed me.

I sometimes wondered what nightmares Amy had about going too far, about losing herself in her power and never coming back. I also wondered how often she had them. But I never wondered if she had them. I didn't even have to ask her, or read anything about it in Worm. I knew.

As I lay awake and pondered all these things for at least the tenth time, I realized that this time I was reaching at least slightly different conclusions. Or that if I was reaching the same conclusions, I felt more resolved about them. My final Khepri nightmare and its definitive ending had at least made me realize there was a difference between jumping on a grenade to save someone else, and methodically amputating your own human sensibilities because it let you move faster.

That last nightmare where even only one man's murder had still not made the scenario clean enough had told me, clearly and unambiguously, that the only thing sacrificing 'everything' to get the job done truly meant was that when the job was done, your life would be too. And that the only acceptable amount of deliberate cold-blooded murder of innocents to get the job done was 'zero'. Even one was too many. Accidents were one thing, failures were one thing, but outright pushing the button on someone for expediency? Just. Plain. Wrong.

The Hard Woman making Hard Choices was an illusion, a trap. Depending on context you could consider it either a self-justifying fallacy or a nihilistic endpoint, but however you parsed the word salad it all ended up in the same place. It was a dead end. If the situation was such that you truly could not save the day without having to cross that particular event horizon, then you just weren't coming back.

And so if you believed that in this universe things happened for a reason, then you also had to believe that it was possible to save the day without needing to take that last fatal plunge. And I don't mean in the sense of 'dying on the battlefield', because heroes risked that as a matter of course and were right to do so. I meant in the sense of 'sacrificing your own soul to take your enemy's with you'. No. That was wrong, because it had to be.

It wasn't wrong to concentrate on individuals, on people, on connections and the human touch, instead of abandoning that all in pursuit of 'what was important'. People were important. Connections were important. They were what made us human. And ditching your humanity as an acceptable trade for saving the world was a self-defeating paradox, because your humanity was the only thing that let you really see the world. To know it was a place where real people with real feelings lived and wasn't just a game theory problem or a mathematical abstract.

How could you possibly save anything after you'd already forfeited your ability to actually perceive it as it was, or as it should be?

So yes, I believed that, because I had to believe that. Because the alternative was to become someone that would come to see the world as theirs to save, or theirs to change, or theirs to protect, or theirs to destroy. And that was the fundamental error that had been underlying all my nightmares. Choosing to see the world as mine instead of as ours. Because no matter how much power that Inspired Inventor could give me, it wasn't just my world. And it never would be.

This world, and all worlds, belonged to all of us. And we all belonged to them. And even if the world or worlds needed someone unique like me to help them fight the battles that they never could, that still didn't mean I could ever let myself lose track of this key insight.

And if letting myself try to help the world one person at a time, starting with those nearest to me and working outwards, was what helped me to never lose track of that important a principle… then that's what I'd do.

Of course, even with all that being true that didn't mean I could or should focus solely on the immediate concerns of my local environment and never look at the big picture, but as with all the things the trick was trying to find the proper balance between all your competing priorities and responsibilities. That was called life.

So I'd keep one eye on the horizon and the other on the next step in front of me, and try to do the best I could with what I had and not kill myself with guilt even if what I did wasn't perfect and never would be.

I sighed. That's what I'd been already trying. and I was still laying awake at night after nightmares like this. But as plans went it would just have to do until a better one came along.

My alarm clock beeped just as I'd finished repeating my affirmations to myself and processing my latest insight, and I looked over at it. 6:30am, February 18th, 2011.

Time to get up and get dressed. This is the day Binary debuts on the Wards.

But first, it was time for high school.

"So, today's the big day?" Amy said softly, using the schoolyard prison-whisper every student knew for talking about private topics in public. We were sitting in our usual seats together at a table one down from the throne where Victoria Dallon, leader of the Very Populars at Arcadia High School and unquestioned queen of her domain, would hold court over all she surveyed.

Up until now Amy had sat at her sister's right hand because Vicky of course wouldn't make her sister sit anywhere else. It didn't matter that Amy was mousy, reclusive, and socially not awesome when Vicky and the girls that gravitated around her were the exact opposite of those things, Victoria Dallon loved her sister and was certainly not going to cut her out or let anyone else cut her out over such trivial concerns. So if you went to Arcadia then you accepted the Dallon sisters as a package deal and that was it.

The problem was that as one of God's natural extroverts, Vicky simply didn't get that introverts like Amy found being in the middle of the crowd exhausting and not stimulating. That to them social interaction was a thing they wanted to do in measured amounts, in-between periods of just quietly being by themselves to recharge their batteries. Its not that introverts felt emotions differently than other people. They cared and had friends and enemies and loved and hated as deeply as anyone else. They just expressed differently, and had different… social energy flows, you could call it.

The ideal way to express affection to an introverted friend or sibling was about the same way you'd do so with a cat. You'd let them know you were nearby and that if they felt like coming over and socializing, you'd love to have them. But then you let them have their space and decide when to make the final approach on their own time. You didn't isolate them, but you didn't just go and clasp them to your bosom or parade them at your side either.

And, yes, anybody who'd ever so much as seen Victoria Dallon could understand why Amy could get a little worn out by her sometimes, because when it came to emotional things Vicky just didn't do subtle. You were either gleefully clasped to the aforementioned bosom or else you were a disregarded part of the background as she flew on by. 'Middle ground' to Vicky was a word in the dictionary between ''Huh?' and 'What?'

So that delicate little balance that I mentioned worked great for introverts? I was still trying to figure out how I'd explain it to Vicky. It's not that she was ignorant or possessed poor social intelligence. Vicky was actually one of the smartest people in the school and it wasn't just her superhero good looks and aura powers that made her so damn charismatic. But just like doctors really sucked at diagnosing themselves, Amy was simply too close to Vicky for her to see Amy's situation at all objectively. So Vicky was simultaneously Amy's primary source of emotional support in her life and a wearying drain on her social reserves whenever they were in public together.

Huh. Now that I thought about it, that might be the reason for Amy's whole… confused emotional situation… about her sister. Having your life suck so hard that only one person in your life gave you any real emotional support was an emotionally unhealthy situation as is, but if even that one person was only a welcome relief to you when you were in private together and became just another environmental stressor when you were out in public, then yeah, that might get cross-connected with intimacy down in the subconscious.

Let alone the fact that Vicky was simply so damn gorgeous that even I felt a little gay for Glory Girl and I was as straight as Euclid's ruler. And that Amy, with the exquisitely poor timing that accompanied so many historical events in Worm, had been adopted into the Dallon family only immediately after reaching the cutoff age for the Westermarck Effect. You know, that subconscious response that kept you from perceiving the people you'd grown up in childhood with as sexual beings at all? That basically stopped working at age six and Amy had been what, seven or eight?

In fact, the more closely I observed the more I wondered if that whole aura thing had been just fanon. I mean, I certainly wished Vicky could get a better handle on that damned thing because feeling sudden bursts of excitement or anxiety whenever anything caused Mount Victoria to boil over at the next table was pretty annoying, but I had every opportunity to observe Amy's subliminal twitches as Vicky entered or left the room and Amy certainly didn't act like an addicted person would as their 'fix' either came or went. She seemed to just be somebody under conditions where anyone's feelings might get a little confused, then constantly subjected to a massive amount of completely unrelated stress which, as chronic stress did, had the effect of magnifying all emotions out of normal proportion.

Which thank God, because that meant I could hopefully help with this whole thing simply by being Amy's friend instead of having to get into some complicated psychological manipulation scenario. Which would be patronizing, possibly ethically dubious, and far too likely to explode in my face.

It was part of the high school social paradox that unless someone was Unpopular then them sitting alone at a table meant that you were required to sit down all around her and begin the social circle, but if they were sitting at a table already discussing something quietly with a friend then that plus a little body language was immediately accepted as 'Privacy Please!'. So simply by hanging out with me, Amy could get more alone time then she could by actually being alone. Look, we were all teenagers in this school and that's not exactly a form of life famous for its rationality.

As far as Vicky's opinion on the whole matter, she was just happy that her sister seemed happy and if Amy wanted to spend her time geeking out in a quiet corner with a fellow geek then sure, why not. She'd still charge over every now and then to touch base, and of course I'd first been given the hairy eyeball for a while to make sure I wasn't some social climber or jerk trying to cultivate Panacea under false pretenses – which actually had happened before - but a quick word from Dean to her that I was actually the next Ward-to-be, after the Wards themselves had finally been informed, had then cleared up her suspicions.

Yes, I was at Arcadia. In fact, they'd fast-tracked me into Arcadia as quickly as possible after I'd had my conversation with Director Piggot. The reason for that is because they'd have had enough trouble keeping 'new girl must be the new Ward!' from occurring to everyone as it was, and they certainly didn't need to make that harder for themselves by doing something as idiotic as having my public debut and my school transfer being simultaneous.

As is, by rushing me in here back in late January my transfer looked more like 'Wait, wasn't she that girl in the locker from Winslow? I guess she just got out of the hospital and of course she can't go back to that horrible place so now she's here' as opposed to 'So, new Ward, huh?' And by the time Binary would have her big reveal I'd already have been part of the background here for several weeks, and no new girl showing up immediately after Binary's' debut would be taken as 'Huh, I guess Binary goes to the same school Shadow Stalker went to, because I don't think she was here either.' A nice little double-shuffle.

For that matter, the Locker was also a good public explanation for how and why Amy and I were sitting together. By letting it out that she'd saved my life after the Locker then well of course I'd look her up to say thank you once I got to Arcadia, and if we apparently hit it off from there…?

No, I wasn't sitting with the Wards yet. For one thing, secret ID concerns meant they didn't want to sit together with each other every day and they actually did have friends like normal kids. For another, they hadn't been told who I was - or vice versa, but of course I'd already known - until several days before my scheduled public debut. We'd already gotten the masks-off and introduce-each-other session out of the way before being expected to go on stage together, but we hadn't really had much of a chance to get to know each other well yet. That would come later as I settled into Wards training and console rotation and patrols.

And yes, I'd originally had plans to get my GED. Those plans were now junked. Both because from my dad's point of view it was an entirely legitimate concern that 'diploma from Arcadia' looked far better on the college application than 'GED from Brockton Bay', because the Wards were offering to pay for the full-ride, and because I certainly couldn't help Amy get herself a safe space to breathe in if I wasn't at the same school she was. It's not as if she was a Ward, even if her sister was dating one.

"Yup," I told her after first making sure we had no eavesdroppers. "The others already got the day off for the event, and I stay here for the half to maintain the optical illusion that I'm not the new one. Then I zip out right after lunch while I'm officially in the office having transition stuff with the guidance counselor, and hopefully nobody notices new girl wasn't actually on-stage during the late morning run-up."

"They put a lot of work into those optical illusions, don't they?" she said. "I honestly wonder how much the logistics cost just on you guys alone."

"Well, you know why its extra important in my case."

"Oh do I ever," she nodded. "So, still no urges to huff the sulfuric acid in chem class?"

I rolled my eyes and gave her an imitation Glory Girl shoulder punch just to let her know no hard feelings over the running trifecta gag, and she almost-smiled back.

"Nope. And speaking of unpleasant smells, I've got-" I looked at my watch. "Six minutes to dine and dash before I have to slide out and get ready to talk to the reporters."

"Good luck," she said with honest reassurance, dropping the snark for a bit before grinning. "And remember, no matter how badly you stutter you can't possibly make a worse first impression than Dennis did."

"Amy Dallon, you have the pure and kind heart of a Disney Princess-" I began.

"-in a jar in my bedroom." she finished, and we both chuckled.

"-and I'm looking forward to having a productive and inspiring time with the Brockton Bay Wards," I finished the prepared speech.

"Thank you, Binary," Deputy Director Renick said. "Now, we're willing to take a few questions from the crowd…"

"Aegis, how do you feel about your new teammate?" one reporter yelled at him.

"She's made an excellent first impression on all of us and I expect great things from her in the future," he replied smoothly. Yeah, they gave us a lot of media prep for things like this.

"Clockblocker, is it true that that you prank all new entrants to the Wards and how did you get Binary?"

Clockblocker actually sighed on hearing that one before replying with a legitimately serious tone of voice. "That rumor is not true, and I did not 'get' Binary. I know my reputation, but being deliberately cruel or obnoxious to your teammates is what a d- unintelligent person would do." he cut himself off, after deliberately saying just enough of his original word to leave it unambiguous what his opinion had been. Nice microphone skills.

Wait, did he just get in a zing at the not-so-dear departed Shadow Stalker without anybody but us even knowing what he'd said? Hah!

The Deputy Director looked like he wanted to say something, then seemed to shrug and decide that Clock's answer actually had said the right thing if not in exactly the right manner.

"Binary, what's your thoughts on how the heroic capes in Brockton Bay are outnumbered almost two-to-one by the villains and gangs?" a third reporter broke in smoothly. Ah, the ambush question. Even without any media experience, just the coaching, I was entirely unsurprised. Blood in the water brings out the sharks, after all.

"That outnumbered or not we are still here, and that we're not going anywhere." I replied calmly and without hesitation. The Deputy Director, checked before he could step in and run interference, did a little double-take and then micro-nodded at me as if in approval of how well I'd fielded it.

"Is it true that Shadow Stalker was dismissed from the Wards?" another voice called, but their having forgotten to address it to any particular Ward meant it was wide open to be grabbed by one of the adults.

"Shadow Stalker chose to withdraw from the Wards to concentrate further on her educational opportunities, and we look forward to her having an honorable career with the Protectorate in the future," the Deputy Director replied with the standard boilerplate the PRT had been using ever since Shadow Stalker had first been thrown into the memory hole, and every Ward on-stage maintained our patented neutral expressions. You learned that one fast if you had to do media appearances on a regular basis. "And we're coming up on time, so, last question?"

"Binary, what's your Tinkertech specialty?"

"I'm still going through powers testing but so far I've had a lot of success with things involving computers," I said. "And yes, that's part of why I picked my cape name."

"Thank you Binary, and thank you all," the Deputy Director said, and with that we wrapped up the press conference and headed out.

Whew. Okay, that's day one over without any disasters. Now we'll just see how this goes from here.

Author's Note: I thank whoever gave me the idea for the nightmare sequence, because that folded so neatly into character development I already had planned but hadn't quite figured out how to show. In fact, that particular inspiration let me get an entire chapter out ahead of schedule.

So yes, now you know part of what's been riding Taylor all along and how she reaffirms her beliefs to herself regularly because she has to. She's not oblivious to the tremendous weight and responsibilities upon her, she just cries on the inside. Plus, natch, her belief that her humanity must be something she preserves, or else she won't be able to do her mission properly. Because motivations matter along with actions. And because at moments like these, human beings cling to faith in things.

Also, did anyone ask for some slice of life? Because you can have some slice of life. :)

And yes, right now she's much closer to Amy than the Wards. She hasn't even met the Wards for intros until shortly before her public debut - they didn't even find out until a couple days before the 18th that the new girl at Arcadia who's hanging out with Panacea is also their new teammate - but she's had weeks to start her friendship with Amy.

And yes, I have my own take on Amy Dallon's Vicky thing instead of just going straight for the aura, because, well, why not try something new if you can? Besides, I am an introvert IRL, even if I've never been a teenaged girl, so I can entirely write from what I know there.

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

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cliffc999

Jul 19, 2019

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cliffc999

cliffc999

Jul 19, 2019

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Evolution 3.3

"And this is The Console," Dennis said, pronouncing the words with deliberately stentorian tones. We were both sitting in the console room in the dedicated Wards quarters beneath the downtown PRT building, and there were no visitors scheduled, so we were masks-off and using first names.

"Yea at first you will hate it, but soon you will learn to love it as you would your Big Brother," he continued on, deliberately dropping the 1984 reference. "Because they will give you no choice."

"What, they let Wards run the dispatch center?" I asked him. "Isn't that a critical node?"

"They let us train to run the dispatch center," he replied in a much more normal voice, "but no, we're not being left alone to actually run it. This is just a mirror to the real console at HQ, and mostly we're just following along behind the duty agent as he calls the shots."

"Why wou- ohhh, because we're supposed to grow up and eventually join the Protectorate, and this way we've learned how PRT field operations are run and know all the moves and don't accidentally friendly-fire the support agents behind us because we're not on the same page."

"That's it," he nodded. "So, older brother who played team sports or military family? Because normally that's not an immediately intuitive concept to people. I needed the full explanation before I got it."

"No siblings," I said, "and my dad's in the Dockworkers. I just read a lot. A whole lot. There's basically a random library's worth of stuff up here," I said, poking a finger at my temple.

"Do you have total recall?" he asked. "Because don't let Carlos know that or else you will never get out from doing all the Wards paperwork."

"No, just a really effective cramming method I sort of worked out. I… might actually be able to teach it to other people," I continued in thoughtful realization. "I've never actually tried to, or even thought of doing that."

"Keep doing that," he said, reclining in his chair. "Thinking about and bringing up random stuff with us, that is. Chris tends to have more ideas flow for his own Tinkertech when he's bouncing them off other people then when he gets all wrapped up by himself in the lab, even if none of us are Tinkers or really understand what he's talking about. Everybody talks about Tinkering like it's all about diving deep into the solo Tinker fugue, and that actually seems to work for Armsmaster, but after watching Chris work I'm starting to wonder if more Tinker collabs wouldn't be the way to go."

"Hey, I'm all for Tinker collabs," I said. "That's one of the things I was looking forward to the most when I got here. I just haven't had a chance to really compare circuit boards with him yet because we haven't shared a shift."

"We have team bonding things a couple Saturdays per month as well, so you'll definitely have a chance to discuss it with him there if not earlier," he said, before looking around and then continuing more quietly. "Okay, I'm not pressing but I notice you didn't mention Armsmaster when you said what you were looking forward to more Tinker collabs. And he's one of the top hero tinkers in the world, I'd expect you to be all about getting a chance to learn from him. Chris definitely was when he first got here."

"If you're really asking 'Taylor, are the rumors about you and Dragon true?', the answer is 'Which ones?' I was trying to get in touch with her on PHO right before I got Coilnapped, and we have stayed in touch since if you're asking. Right now she's got a major software project I'm assistant coding on. Telecommuting is the best commuting."

"Actually, I was asking why does Armsmaster seem to have such a problem with you? Because its like the temperature drops ten degrees every time you're in the same room. And he normally leaves dealing with routine Wards stuff to Miss Militia, but ever since you've arrived he's been dropping by more often."

"Blunt truth? He thinks I'm Tinker crazy." I said, circling one finger around my ear. "As in Bonesaw crazy."

Dennis blinked in honest confusion. "He thinks you're crazy? Um, did your name and Sophia's somehow get swapped on his incident reports or something? Taylor, you know exactly why we'd know what a psycho teammate really looks like and, um, yeah. So did you have a really bad Tinker fugue once or-?"

I sighed. "How much do you already know about my rescue from Coil's base?"

"Well, I did hear about someone getting handcuffed to a console," he said, grinning.

"To cut a long story short, I got out of my cell but not out of the base. I did get a message out to Dragon but then I got re-taken, and ended up alone with Coil and him about to kill me. Velocity ran in for the save at literally the last fraction of a second. As in, the trigger was already pulled and the hammer was already falling towards the round in the chamber when Velocity got there and put his thumb in front of it."

"Damn. But even Armsmaster would understand your having a, um-"

"Episode?"

"-episode over a close call like that. So I'm a little confused."

"Assuming the hostage-taker is a total psychopath and completely untrustworthy in normal negotiation, how would you logically solve the hostage problem?"

"Wait, that sounds familiar... The hostage problem is logically insol- you're quoting Lois Bujold, aren't you? The Miles Vorkosigan series?"

"Miles had judged the hostage-problem logically insoluble; therefore, clearly the only thing to do was make it Cavilo's problem instead of his own." I quoted from The Vor Game. "Right before Velocity arrived I was trying to flip it around and take Coil hostage just like he'd taken me hostage, so he wouldn't shoot me."

"How do you do that with a gun already to your head?"

"By being crazy prepared enough to have already worried about the contingency of ending up stuck in this no-win situation before you even started your escape attempt, which as it turned out I was right about… and being crazy enough to make a, er, Tinkertech radiation grenade. As in 'Coil, I've just dosed us both with approximately 2000 rads. Your only choices are to surrender immediately so we can both get to Panacea in time, or not surrender and kill us both. And you were going to kill me anyway so you're the only person in the room with something to lose right now.' But he started to shoot me before I could tell him, but then Velocity saved me anyway so we thought it was all right, but then Coil escapes before-"

"Taylor, stop." Dennis said, palms out as if to ward me off physically, and then he lowered his hands and looked at me intently. "Are you okay? And please don't say you're fine, because what you just said is not fine at all."

"I'm coping," I said. "Trust me. I had already this conversation with the Director, and I know about the available support options."

He looked at me for a long while and sighed. "Okay, I'm about to say something really offensive and I apologize in advance, but I just have to clear the air." He stopped and continued with deliberate emphasis. "Bullshit."

I just looked at him.

"That's exactly what I mean!" he replied "You just told me about something incredibly PTSD-worthy in your recent past, then explained how it was even worse than the nightmare I was imagining, then confessed that you accidentally manslaughtered someone – even if it sounds like the bad guy did it all to himself and totally had it coming - and then you had me direly insult you on a personal level and you still haven't so much as raised your voice. You should have gone off on me like a rocket for that last one. No normal person is that self-controlled!"

I sighed regretfully. "So, do you think I'm crazy?"

"No, I think you're repressing like crazy," he said earnestly. "I think you're bottling up more stuff than even Missy does and have even less outlet for it. I think you're going along pretending that if you don't let anyone ever see you need to vent then that means you have nothing that needs venting." He said, leaning forward pleadingly. "And Taylor, I really, really don't want to watch you have to find out the hard way how much that one won't work. Because I've been there, done that, and gotten the trigger event."

I desperately tried to think of something, anything I could say that wasn't a lie. Because… no, its not that I couldn't lie.

Its that I didn't want to.

"You already know about my trigger event, right?" I asked him.

"The Winslow locker incident? I know the outlines. We all do. They had to tell us about Sophia's real case, not the PR version."

"Something happened to me in that locker, and I mean besides my coming out a Tinker," I said. "Something… my head hasn't worked quite the same way since. I'm not irrational, and believe you me, they tested for that. But my emotions are… best analogy is, I don't have an off switch for them like my Brute rating lets me off-switch my pain sensors, but its something related to that. I have a bypass for them. My rational thoughts can be rational through almost anything because I'm still in touch with my feelings, I still know what I should be feeling, but I can simultaneously keep intellectual focus as if I wasn't actually feeling."

"And you do that all the time?" he asked a little nervously.

"Oh God no!" I said passionately, and caught his exhalation of relief. "I'm pretty sure that would make me genuinely crazy. I call it my Invictus mode, and I mark it 'For Emergency Use Only'. But used in moderation it hasn't hurt me yet, and it lets me get through intense moments without needing to vent trauma later because the, ummm, emotional charge never accumulates in the first place"

"It matters not how strait the gate / How charged with punishments the scroll / I am the master of my fate / I am the captain of my soul." he quoted from Henley's famous poem of the same name. "Good name for a power for emotional self-control. But I didn't see 'secondary Thinker rating' on your power test, just that mind-over-body thing they finally decided was a minor Brute rating and not a Thinker power."

"Dennis, I just got through explaining to you that part of my chain of command thinks I'm sprained in the membrane, and you thought I was actually going to tell them about neurological differences?" I said incredulously.

And for the first time since I'd met him I saw how Clockblocker had gained his reputation for inappropriately timed humor, because despite his best efforts he couldn't avoid snorting in laughter. "Okay, now I'm convinced you're a mentally normal teenager like the rest of us," he said. "Right down to burying dumb stuff that you're afraid would get you in trouble. Although my advice is that you'd still better find a way to fess up about that one yourself before they catch you out on it the hard way, or Miss Piggy will have you on console duty for a month when they finally do."

"She really doesn't deserve to be called that, you know," I said as gently as I could.

"Wait until you've met her for more than a recruitment pitch and tell me that again." he shot back. "I can't recall a single positive interaction with her since I got on the team."

"Have you ever seen her for anything other a mess that escalated so high they had to call her office?" I asked. "Do you think that might have had something to do with it?"

"You are a depressingly logical young woman and the fact that you likely have a point will not save you from soon enduring my formidable collection of Vulcan jokes," he replied more calmly. "Speaking of which, look! An obvious distraction!" He actually went and pointed behind me, and I didn't bother to look.

"Yes?" I said amusedly.

"Lightening the mood, can I ask you why you shook hands with me without hesitating at the intro session? Because ever since that stupid rumor about me being the compulsive 'Freeze!' prankster went around even some of the agents are afraid to let me touch them, let alone other kids."

"What did I have to lose?" I said, shrugging. "Your power doesn't do the slightest bit of permanent damage. So if you actually do it then I lose a couple minutes and now I know to never let you stand behind me with any ice cubes, and if you don't do it then I haven't offended someone who didn't deserve it."

"As I said," he replied warmly while saluting me with his soda. "You are a depressingly logical young woman."

"Just call me T'alor" I replied using the abbreviating convention for a female Vulcan name, and we both laughed.

My finally revealing the existence of Invictus to Clockblocker several days after my formal induction is what seemed to finally break the ice for me with the Wards, because before then they'd been a little standoffish. Oh, they's been entirely polite – even when the grown-ups weren't watching – but not entirely open. It hadn't occurred to me except in hindsight that the Shadow Stalker experience would have left emotional scars on them too.

Just as I might have been afraid to open myself up to Sophia's old teammates for fear of receiving more of the same treatment, they were also leery of immediately accepting Sophia's replacement on the team out of worry that I might have been a basketful of issues buried underneath a surface layer of competence like she'd been. And the part where more details you knew about the incident in Coil's base the less normal I looked certainly hadn't helped there. The details of the incident clearly hadn't been distributed across the entire team judging from Clockblocker's reaction, but from a couple things Aegis had said and the way he reacted to me I was fairly certain that he at least had been read in on the complete version of events as Wards team leader. And Gallant's reaction to me was also mixed signals, probably because Invictus had been confusing him.

But the fact that I hadn't tried to hide anything from Clockblocker when he'd asked had opened up the circle of trust, and Gallant finally relaxed with an actual explanation provided for why my emotional readings were different from anyone else's. And with Aegis helping run interference for me we got my 'secondary Thinker ability' on the rolls as an honest misunderstanding of not mentioning it during the power testing instead of a deliberate attempt to conceal it. I actually did do much of his paperwork for Aegis for the next week as a thank-you for that, as Clockblocker had joked to me about doing. Besides, as the greatest expert in PRT Bureaucracy on the team it was far easier for me than for him.

… now that I think about it, I think I've just doomed myself to being team secretary forevermore. Oh well, she who wields the pen wields at least some of the power and all that.

And it certainly wouldn't disappoint Vista's image of me for me to be the secretary because Vista was, to put it charitably, a little star-struck by me. Having been directly involved in the base assault herself meant that she'd been the next most-informed on the team after Aegis of my exact circumstances over there simply because like most precocious middle schoolers forced to spend lots of time among older kids and grown-ups, Vista had become a grand master of the fine art of eavesdropping. And that was before you factored in what a power to bend space could do to let you overhear things.

So she'd walked away from that night not only ecstatic at the opportunity to prove a key linchpin of a major Protectorate assault herself – because neither I, Dragon, nor anyone else involved could imagine how they'd have gotten into that base anywhere near as quickly and easily without Dragon and Vista to both open that tunnel – but also under the impression that the new girl on the Wards was basically every female action hero rolled into one as well as a Tinker supergenius. That much admiration is… really flattering, but also not healthy. I mean, you're just asking for an explosion of disappointed outrage the first time you're caught stubbing your toe like a normal human. So every time the topic came up, I tried to gently de-escalate.

Still, it was really hard to dislike Vista and nobody even tried to dislike Vista, even when she was being waaaaaay too intense for a twelve-year-old. She was legitimately a very good person. She didn't lie, cheat, or steal, she always did her work 100% without shirking or complaining, she didn't need constant supervision to avoid goofing off, and did I mention she was only twelve? Most of us weren't this together with our lives when we were eighteen! And she wasn't some humorless child-bot either. If you actually got her going enough to relax her posture, she could almost trade snark with Amy. Even if half of it didn't come out sounding remotely as tough as she'd intended it to.

So it really said something about horrid Vista's home life was that her parents were apparently entirely incapable of recognizing that either they'd set some impossible expectations on their child or else had gotten impossibly lucky in the kid lottery. Not that I could ask her about her home life, because one of the first things everyone else had told me after I'd arrived – out of her hearing, of course – is that you did not ask Vista about her home life. You didn't even bring up the topic. Doing that would make her go monosyllabic in a heartbeat and it could be hours before she'd relax enough to talk again. It was a sad thing to say that you were actually glad that someone's parents were completely neglecting their child's career as a Ward, but in her case it was a mercy because it meant at least she had us for a partial safe space from her own parents.

Yeah, this was not really a picture of long-term mental health here. But Vista was still coping for now, and when I asked Aegis why the hell nobody was doing anything for her permanent situation when it was this obviously horrible to anyone with one working eye, his answer made me want to vomit harder than the radiation sickness had. It also made me vow to never bring any of my problems to the Brockton Bay Youth Guard office because while they might do good work elsewhere, something must be direly wrong with the people there.

Because what kind of ultra level master con job had her parents run on Youth Guard here that YG had expended virtually all their political capital in Brockton Bay on gaining a binding court junction that said the PRT had lost the right to intervene in Vista's particular home situation, and that it was solely up to Youth Guard to make that call from now on? Out of alleged concerns that the PRT would unhealthily exploit her because she was a Shaker 9?

OK, that last one is superficially plausible. I mean, I get how it could be sold to an audience even if I couldn't really see the PRT people I was actually interacting with treat her like that. But that was still no excuse for the court to just instantly assume 'PRT bureaucracy bad, child's parents sacred, court order granted, next case!'. If family court had worked like that all the time then Family Services could never get any child out of a genuinely abusive situation.

And not even Director Costa-Brown swearing on a stack of Bibles could have gotten the Brockton Bay Wards to agree that Vista's situation was not genuinely abusive. In hindsight, now I saw part of how the hell everybody missed Shadow Stalker's mental malfunction for so long. Clearly YG's local office wasn't holding up their end at all, and that meant it took only one PRT worker goofing on the job to cause the situation at Winslow.

But right now, there was nothing we could do about it except give Vista all the emotional support she'd let herself accept from us. Well, I was basically becoming the team admin person and I did have all this II-given knowledge, so I'd see if I could manage something. In my copious free time.

Because in-between Wards training, Wards getting-acquainted, getting that Tinker collab set up with Kid Win, helping Dragon with her Endbringer tracking algorithm, using that project to start getting Endbringer data from Dragon to help me actually turn these hypothetical Endbringer weapons designs to successful-in-simulation-at-least Endbringer weapon designs I could actually submit, Arcadia, actual friendships, PR events, and a very very slow and painstaking quest towards an actual automated assembly of my very own even if I had to stealth build the fracking thing one fraction of a piece at a time in-between Armsmaster paranoia moments… well, it's a good thing I didn't sleep much.

So, during my first week on the Wards I'd managed to break the ice, start to get within their circle of trust, keep up with my training, help Dragon finish her tracking algorithms, and even begin the preliminaries for the next phase of my Tinker Cycle. At last I'd found my feet and started to gather legitimate resources. I'd thought I'd finally started to get a handle on things.

And then the Simurgh attacked Canberra.

"Taylor, it's not your fault," Chris said, letting me lean on his shoulder and cry. Dennis sat on my other side just trying to be reassuring with his presence, and Missy was hovering nearby in a nervous fret.

I wasn't even trying to use Invictus. For one thing, they all knew I had it and 'Don't let Taylor emotionally repress without an actual tactical need' was rapidly becoming as much an informal Wards SOP as 'Don't talk to Missy about her home life' or 'Don't let Chris have more than two minutes to try and explain his Tinkertech to a reporter'.

And for another thing, I wouldn't use it because I deserved to feel all of this pain. Because on the console screen I was busy watching the worst of the Endbringers condemn another city to a worse hell than death and I should known and I should have done something. But I hadn't even known that there was an Endbringer attack between the date of the Locker and the Leviathan assault on Brockton Bay. John hadn't read about that anywhere?

Gods, was there even going to be a Leviathan attack in May or would I be wrong about that too for some reason? Nothing made sense anymore!

So I was busy sitting in the Wards console room bawling my eyes out while my friends surrounded me. Not that anybody was ever happy during an Endbringer attack, anywhere in the world, but none of them were me. None of them had been the Inspired Inventor.

It didn't matter that none of my weapons designs were even half ready yet. It didn't matter that I hadn't had the slightest chance to test them on a proving ground, because they weren't even built, and had only just yesterday started to get enough data from prior Endbringer events about Dragon to even set up a simulator chamber. It didn't matter that I'd helped Dragon finish the tracking algorithm and that was the only reason Canberra had had enough time to do an even 65% successful evacuation. It didn't matter because, because-

Behind me the door opened, and I vaguely heard Miss Militia's voice. "Somebody told me that there was a situation?"

"It's Taylor, ma'am." Aegis said. "She just… broke down, right after the Endbringer attack started."

"It's new Tinker syndrome," Kid Win said hurriedly, trying to explain for me. "Like the whole angst party I threw about my Alternator Cannon not being already done and a proven Endbringer-killer after the Leviathan attack last year. She feels like she should have already already invented something that could have stopped it even when she couldn't possibly have. But that's not her fault, really!" I could feel Clockblocker nodding his head along vigorously to that on my other side.

"Taylor, do you need to lie down?" Miss Militia came over and asked me gently. "Or would you like to go home?"

"I-I'll be all right, ma'am." I said, sniffling. "I don't need to go home. I need to-"

"Taylor," Miss Militia said, kneeling down to take my hand. "No one expects you to single-handedly solve the problem of the Endbringers. And we all know that you did brilliant work helping Dragon with her tracking algorithm. The initial projections are that you have already helped save hundreds of thousands of lives. You did good, Taylor. But the fact that you've done so much to solve the problem already doesn't mean that you should raise your expectations on yourself even higher. Please don't torture yourself for Canberra. This is not your fault."

"W-with all due respect, ma'am, you are wrong." I said. "There are so many man-hours of work I could have done in the past months and didn't, so much I could have-"

"And halt." she said firmly, raising one palm to cut me off. "Taylor, as you may know I am a Noctis cape. I have zero natural requirement for sleep, exceeding even your own abilities as a partial Noctis cape. So in theory I could patrol at least 18 hours a day, needing the remainder for my administrative duties and some brief rests for any overstrained muscles. Do you know why I don't?"

"Ma'am?" I said blearily.

"I don't because no matter what the limits of my physical endurance are, the limits of my emotional endurance remain largely the same as any other person's," she told me. "And I am aware that your secondary powers allow you to push yourself longer and harder, with less cost, than most people do. As I said, I share many of those same gifts. But any finite number can be reduced to zero with sufficient effort, and even the strongest person will shatter themselves if they do not let themselves rest. Human minds are designed to require things like social bonds, sources of recreation, and time to decompress. No cape can drive themselves like a machine, not even ones like us."

"It's not the same," I said. "I had so many designs I never-"

"Then work on them," she replied, "but on a sane schedule. If you truly think you have something that will contribute to the next Endbringer attack, then don't procrastinate… but don't think you are a failure if you can't have it ready immediately. Even Armsmaster or Dragon doesn't carry the weight of such expectations, and there is no reason that you should."

Oh, there were quite a few reasons I should, even if I couldn't share them with anyone.

"I… I'm sorry about this, um, episode ma'am. I'll-"

"You will stay right here with your friends, and let them help you," she said. "And that is all that you are expected to do today. If you don't feel ready for duty tomorrow then I expect you to seek me out then, all right?"

"Yes ma'am."

"Aegis, please feel free to call me again if you think there is anything else requires my attention. Unless anyone objects I'll let you have your privacy back now."

'Thank you," I heard him say, and he walked her to the door and saw her out.

Two thin arms snaked awkwardly around me from the front, and I incredulously noted that the person trying to give me a hug was Missy. I leaned down and into her to make it easier for her, and let Dennis pat me reassuringly on the shoulder while Chris hovered nearby trying to think of something else to say and make it better, and the remainder stood behind them and kept an eye out. And even through my sorrow and guilt I was still grateful that they were here. And I was happy that I'd been able to make such friends.

But I still should have done something.

Author's Note: In before anyone starts end zone celebrating - the event of 'Taylor fails to know Canberra is coming due to John's incomplete knowledge and she collapses in guilt when it does' had already been scheduled to happen before I'd finished 3.1. I'd been building up to this moment the entire time. You didn't make me course correct at all. I even had already decided Clockblocker would quote the poem, before someone else had referenced it.

And oh yeah, its still not going to make Taylor shift immediately into God-Queen Speedrun mode. In fact, what with all the chaff flying up around the issue I've actually become uncertain of what it will do for her. I have reached the current limits of my story outline and will need to re-evaluate a bit.

But I will say this much. Arc Three? Is not going to be nearly as short as Arc Two was. I got lots of fluff to get through in addition to the main arc, and the secondary arc, and things I probably haven't even thought of yet. So if you think its not getting to somewhere, wait a while.

That having been said, so, how do you like my Wards?

And yes, Clockblocker in particular. Folks, its important to remember he's actually like the second or third oldest kid there at the start of canon, and by far the one who is most perceptive about people. He's a comedian, not an immature jackass. And good comedy is hard. Hell, there's a reason that being a clown is considered the most intellectually and physically demanding task in the circus.

So yeah, he's not being promoted to co-protagonist or anything, but I took the chance to try doing something other than the usual fanfic cliches with Dennis while still keeping him recognizably Dennis.

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

Check out my (on hiatus) Worm fanfic, A Ghost of a Chance!

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Try out my Jumpchain Creative Mode, my Long-Haul Mode, or my house rules today!

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cliffc999

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Threadmarks Interlude 3-A: Armsmaster / Danny Hebert / Contessa New

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cliffc999

Jul 20, 2019

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#3,280

Interlude 3-A: Armsmaster / Danny Hebert / Contessa

Warning: Child death, neo-Nazi ideology

Armsmaster

"Are you saying that the reaction scales proportionately to the density of the material?" I asked Binary suspiciously.

"Yes sir," she replied with her characteristic faux-meekness. Her manipulative attempts to constantly ingratiate herself with authority figures by feigning compliance were so transparent that I was honestly mystified as to why nobody else seemed to see it. Even the Director's reliably cynical nature seemed to always contain an exemption for our newest Ward, and despite Miss Militia's superior experience with the nuances of social interaction she also kept consistently missing the clear warning signs that I kept trying to point out.

"That could lead directly to an exponential cascade scenario!" I insisted heatedly to the rest of the Tinkertech review board. "You can't possibly be thinking of sanctioning this reckless proposal for a moment."

"As I understood Binary's point, since the secondary reaction scales proportionately to density that would mean it would fail to propagate through less dense mediums. Such as water or air." Dr. Hendricks, the seniormost non-Tinker scientist on the review board, interjected.

"Yes sir," Kid Win, her co-presenter for this presentation, interjected. "The minimum density cutoff for the disintegration reaction to take place at all is determined by the interaction of the quantum resonance frequencies hardwired into the primary firing matrix and could not be changed without physically disassembling and reassembling the fine structure of the entire assembly. As constructed, the Quantum Alternator Cannon would register minimal surface damage and zero penetration on anything with a density equal to or less than than 1.22 grams per cubic centimeter."

"Armsmaster, isn't the density of human flesh only equal to that of water? Which is 1 gram per cubic centimeter?" one of the technicians asked me.

"It varies from 0.9 grams per cubic centimeter for fat tissue on up to approximately 1.75 grams per cubic centimeter for bone tissue," I answered matter-of-factly before continuing. "But yes, the effects of this beam striking a human being would… not inflict serious injury." I conceded. "The reaction would have long since failed to propagate through the skin and muscle to even reach the bone. Unless the subject were struck directly on their keratin or tooth enamel-"

"Thank you, Armsmaster," Deputy Director Renick interrupted me. "So to sum up in layman's terms; this weapon should inflict substantial harm on hardened structures, or ultra-dense tissue such as that which is known to compromise the makeup of Endbringers, while still inflicting minimal if any collateral damage on people or animals caught within the beam. And it would fail to propagate the reaction through air or water at all, save of course for the primary beam pulse itself. Am I substantially correct?"

"Yes sir," Binary said, smiling. "Furthermore, since the efficiency of the disintegration reaction also scales up proportionately to the increasing density of the material encountered, and in theory would do so indefinitely, then the known phenomenon that Endbringer flesh becomes enormously tougher the further you try to cut into it should work against them for once."

Preposterous. My nano-thorn technology had better odds of working, when I finally completed it, than this promised 'magic bullet' would and would certainly have less side effects. Binary's tendencies towards recklessly optimistic weapons design and characteristic lack of safety- ah.

"I believe that you have failed to adequately consider the problem of waste heat," I said, staring down at our two careless young Tinkers as best I could. "If that large a volume of material of exponentially increasing density was actually being disintegrated, then where would that energy be released? I remind the board that Binary already has a prior history of dangerous lack of consideration for energy byprod-"

Director Renick cleared his throat loudly. "Thank you, Armsmaster, but we have already taken that last factor into consideration." I grumbled inwardly because I quite clearly heard the We have long since grown bored of your bringing it up at every session without it actually being said out loud. Why was everyone but me so complacent? Still, at least he turned back to them and continuted to ask, "But I am interested in the answer to Armsmaster's first question."

Kid Win and Binary both started to answer at once, then looked at each other and after a moment or two somehow came to a wordless agreement that she should do the speaking for them. More suspicious behavior again! Why was the Wards' more experienced Tinker so instinctively deferring to the unproven newcomer? Not that Kid Win's own record was that of a paragon of sagacity but his track record was at least adequately proven.

Binary nodded to Kid Win and turned back to the review board. "The full mathematical abstract is in appendix B for Dr. Hendricks' and Armsmaster's review-"

I grumbled inwardly again at the review boards' apparent obliviousness to her clear attempt to subtly undercut my authority in front of the review board by making me sound as if I were merely the assistant evaluator instead of the most experienced Tinker of the Protectorate.

"-but in layman's terms, the disintegration reaction is scaled so that it takes almost as much power to disrupt the next layer of molecules as the last layer's disruption provided. The energy balance is made up by the Alternator Cannon's primary power impulse, of course."

"So it's a largely self-sustaining balancing act," Dr. Hendricks said. "Very elegant in theory, and I will grant that you have already had successful laboratory experiments with the principle, but there's still no guarantee it will scale up symmetrically in large-scale field use."

"We know, sir." Binary answered. "That's why Kid Win and I brought our proposal here today for an intermediate scale field test, one on a static target series. A test that would let us verify the feasibility of the exothermic balance and measure the margin of error should our balance calculations not be entirely exact, and all before we actually asked Dragon to mount the weapon on one of her heavy platforms for a trial combat deployment."

"And where precisely do you think you will find a series of capital-scale high-density targets conveniently located far enough away from inhabited areas and mounted in a large enough heat sink to absorb the massive amounts of waste heat if it turns out your mathematics were wrong?" I inquired challengingly. "And what ridiculous percentage of our budget did you imagine we'd be remotely willing to allocate to set up such a target range?"

And my momentary satisfaction at having finally found a way to shut down this incipient madness collapsed into bitter gall at the board's pleased reaction to her next statement.

"The Boat Graveyard, sir. And for virtually zero cost save that necessary for cordoning off the impact area and a network of sensor buoys."

I honestly could not have told anyone else at that moment if that girl was more frustrating to me when she was being wrong, or when she was being right.

Danny Hebert

"Test firing in ten seconds…"

I stood there trying to keep my facial expression to one of pleased anticipation only instead of the pride that was threatening to burst every vein in my body. Officially I was here as the representative of the Dockworker's Union, and not because that was my little girl out there and she'd finally figured out a way to fix the Boat Graveyard! I had to keep Taylor's identity a secret and that meant I couldn't just charge right over there and give 'Binary' the big damn hug she'd well and truly earned. That would be for as soon as we got home.

Even after Taylor had gotten powers I'd never imagined that she would go on to do things like this, but despite having only been a Ward for a couple of weeks she was already having Tinkertech designs for things like this 'Quantum Alternator Cannon'. Which I'd overheard was actually intended to become an anti-Endbringer weapon after the preliminary field tests like this one helped them refine the design further.

My little girl was going to grow up to help kill Endbringers? Thank God that it would be from a safe distance or else that would be the world's most terrifying thought, not pride-inducing!

"Test firing in five seconds…"

They weren't making a big public ceremony of the test. Oh, the city had been notified and the harbor patrol had closed off the harbor this morning and all the standard safety precautions had been taken, yes. And the nearest derelict ship to the shore wouldn't even be fired at today because they didn't think it was far enough away from the city to be safe. But they were afraid the test firing might not be 100% successful the first time so they weren't making a live media event out of it. A camera crew was in place so that any successes could be broadcast by the Protectorate's PR people later, but if the whole thing fizzled then they didn't want to embarrass anyone.

I noted with awe that the various parts of this 'Quantum Alternator Cannon' were apparently being teleported in somehow, a piece at a time, and assembling themselves as they arrived. Kid Win, who'd apparently been Taylor's partner in designing and building it, was supervising the final assembly by tapping commands onto a keyboard built into the forearm of his own techno-armor, a bright red-and-gold affair that contrasted neatly against my Taylor's dark-blue-and-silver.

The final pieces of the cannon clicked together just as the countdown reached the one-second mark, and the hovering platform it was mounted on finished locking onto the ship intended for the first target…

"FIRING!"

And a golden-white beam leapt forth from the muzzle of the energy cannon to touch the wreckage of the first target, the farthest-out of all of the rusting derelicts that had been blocking the Ship Channel for years. I stared in awe as beam touched the ship and it too turned into gold and white energy, the reaction spreading out across the ship in what had to be only a couple of seconds but by some optical illusion looked as slow as time-lapse photography, and my breath caught in my throat because it was working and Taylor had done it! She'd done it!

The scientists standing at the nearby table full of instruments were babbling things about 'exothermic release calculations' and 'self-sustaining cascade reaction within nominal projections' and sensor buoys in a dispersion pattern to pick up readings and all sorts of other things I didn't understand. As the first ship finished disintegrating and the water rushed in to fill the hole in the water it had left, the Alternator Cannon locked onto the second ship in the program sequence and that one began to go away too. According to the projected schedule it would take approximately twelve minutes to clear more of the wreckage out of the Ship Channel than the city would have been able to do in years.

Oh, there'd still be things to do before it would be clear for shipping, the last couple of ships to be moved out by hand and then possible wreckage below the water dredged and cleared, but the projected cost of dealing with the Boat Graveyard had just been reduced to at most a hundredth of what it had originally been. The background of my mind idly daydreamed about possible arguments and proposals to bring to my next argument with the Mayor's office about the ferry restoral, but the foreground was all Taylor sharing a triumphant high-five with Kid Win as the PRT scientists clustered around to ask questions and Armsmaster was a statue still staring out to sea where the ships had been and only one real thought filled my mind.

My little girl had done it.

Contessa

I stepped out of a Door into the interior of an apartment. Neither particularly rich nor poor, it was just another example of an average urban domicile in an economically depressed city undergoing slow decay. Brockton Bay.

It didn't matter.

I walked past the middle-aged black woman slumped in her armchair, a habitual alcoholic by all appearance given that she was already so drunk as to be unconscious despite it being early afternoon. Her race was irrelevant except that it would particularly focus the rage of the intended target of today's psychological destabilization operation, given what that target's particular racial prejudices were.

I reached into a nearby table drawer for a pack of cigarettes that had to be there. I pulled out the pack, shook loose one cigarette, and then dropped the back adjacent to the armchair as if it had fallen from a careless hand. I lit the cigarette and puffed on it expressionlessly several times, before shaking loose the ash on the floor next to the pack and tucking the lit cigarette neatly in-between the fingers of the unconscious woman. I already knew that the forensic traces of my saliva upon the cigarette butt would be entirely consumed by the fire, and also that no one would be looking for them in the first place.

Having seamlessly created a scenario that the fire marshal's investigation would conclude had been a simple case of an alcoholic smoking and then passing out drunk before extinguishing their cigarette, I called for another Door to return to base.

This woman would die in the fire that would soon engulf this building. Since most of the inhabitants were at work this hour of day, only five other residents would die as well. Four of them did not matter.

The infant child in the apartment upstairs, currently being tended to by a baby-sitter while her mother was at work, did matter. Her death apparently via the carelessness of a drunken wastrel of what the child's mother fervently believed to be an inferior race would drive the bereaved mother to reconcile with her estranged husband and take up his cause again with doubly renewed fervor. Kayden Anders would fully return to the fold of the Empire Eighty-Eight, freed of all the conflicted feelings that had led to her partially stepping away in the first place.

Between this single action and Rebecca's own subtle interference in the post-Coil investigations to prevent Kaiser's own informants from all being discovered, Kaiser would now have his opportunity. All of his old forces would be unified under him once again and he would have, as Coil had had, his window to make inroads into the PRT to the best of his ability. He would have a fair chance to succeed, but no more.

The preparations were complete. And when the proper moment arrived for actually beginning the active phase of the experiment, he would be given the final push.

That mattered, because it was one of the Paths. And the Paths were all that mattered.


	8. ghostchance2

Evolution 3.4

Aegis and I had been out doing one of the Public Service Announcement tours that they didn't emphasize much in Wards recruiting, preferring instead to concentrate on the more glamorous parts of the job.

A PSA tour meant you went out to a school or a mall or a community center or suchlike for a couple of hours, met a bunch of kids or teenagers, and did a short presentation on why drugs were bad or joining a gang was bad or suchlike. Then you hung around and pressed the flesh a while, answering what were usually the same ten questions asked over and over, and signed autographs. If you were lucky the tour was merely boring, which meant painful. If you weren't then something had happened – pushy fan requiring security intervention, medical incident, death threat (Yes, that actually happened to Wards doing public tours. Apparently some gangs actually used it for a gang initiation ritual from time to time.), or similar. And those would require filing an incident report, which meant excruciating.

At least, that's what the others had told me. Because although I'd already been to several media and presentation training sessions like any other Ward this was actually the first one of the PSAs I'd done since I'd joined the team. That's exactly why they'd partnered me with Aegis this time. As our oldest Ward and team leader it was part of his job to help walk the newbies through learning how to keep up the PR side without all the formal trappings of a press conference to protect you.

To be honest I didn't really find any thrill to the PR side of being a Ward. But none of us really did, not even Gallant, and his family had been putting him through deportment lessons and suchlike in preparation for his family's vision of him being the next generation of their little business empire since before he'd even been a parahuman. Still, the main purpose of the Wards program wasn't just to give teens with powers a place to go and people to empathize with but to prepare as many young parahumans as possible for duty with the Protectorate, and you certainly didn't get away from show-the-flag type duties there. So it was hardly like we couldn't plead out from the necessity of starting to learn how here. At least Wards got a little slack when we had public outbreaks of foot-in-mouth disease. By the time you were a full Protectorate member you could barely hope for any at all, not unless said 'outbreak' that was actually a calculated part of your branding.

John's memories had suggested that the Protectorate and the PRT were failing institutions, ones that covered up a structural inability to truly get a handle on the problem of villainy by diverting significant effort into just maintaining an illusion of being able to do so. And it was entirely possible that he was right. I'd already known that since before the day I agreed to join the Wards.

But I hadn't needed John's memories to remind me of the lesson of the Hogfather speech by Terry Pratchett. That not all illusions were lies, and that sometimes the most important things in the world weren't able to come into existence until after enough people believed that they already had. Things such as justice, or honor, or mercy.

And while joining the Protectorate might or might not be the best possible place to find such things, they were at least a place I could hope to find some. Because while I might or might not have had more success in the independent career I'd originally been planning but had already had to abandon as unfeasible, I certainly wouldn't have had any hope of finding such things by going off and joining a crew of villains. No matter what Skitter's delusions along those lines had been.

And as I'd said in my opening press conference, whether outnumbered by the villains or not the important thing was that we were all still here and still fighting as best we could. The Protectorates' eventual defeat might still be a horrible possibility no matter how firmly we stood our ground, but it would be an inevitability if we didn't.

So we'd gone to the community center, finished the speeches, answered the questions, signed the autographs, and were heading out the back entrance to catch the ride back to the PRT building when I heard someone speak.

"Excuse me? Miss Binary?" said the girl, looking about age sixteen or seventeen. I'd never seen her before so she was certainly not from Winslow, and very likely not from Arcadia.

"Yes?" I asked, after reflexively checking out the employee lot and the nearby rooftops. Fortunately, a full head helmet with mirrored faceplate meant they couldn't see you go tactical.

Aegis had also stopped when I did and had turned to fall into position alongside me, but as I was the one being addressed he stayed silent at first to see how I'd handle it.

"I-something happened, and I, I was hoping…" she ground to a halt.

"I'm afraid we have to be back at base soon," I said in my best reassuring voice, "but is it something you can at least start to tell me right now?"

"I-I was attacked."

"By a parahuman?" Aegis asked, switching into professional mode.

"No, by- he said nobody would ever believe me, that his father was on the school board, but I was hoping-"

Aegis sighed, and started to look like he was trying to think of a polite way to haul out the 'The PRT only handles parahuman events as first responders and please talk to the police first'. I started to feel disappointed in him because that certainly wasn't going to be enough to persuade her to go, then told myself I was being a little unfair. That's what they'd told us we were supposed to say, after all, and he wasn't going to deviate from SOP while on a training tour with a new Ward no matter what his feelings might be.

"May I ask your name? It's really impolite to take a statement from 'Hey you!'." I said, trying to gentle her down.

"Carol," she said, smiling with desperate relief at the hope someone was listening. "Carol Saunders. I… c-can you really do something?"

"Binary, we're not the police, remember?" Aegis said, and she started to wilt.

"No we're not," I agreed. "We're teenagers… but we're not powerless teenagers. And I don't mean just us two standing here with the parahuman abilities." I finished, restoring Carol's hope but confusing Aegis. I turned back to Carol, and… well, the helmet meant I didn't need my poker face, but I certainly needed my poker voice. "Carol, did you ever hear of a girl called Taylor Hebert?"

I tried not to feel any amusement at the faint sound of Aegis desperately trying not to swallow his own tongue.

"No, I- oh! The girl in the locker?"

"Yes," I agreed. "I'm pretty sure every high school in the city has heard about her by now. But the reason I brought Taylor up is because the most important lesson in her story isn't just why it went on for her for two years without anybody doing anything. It's why her story finally ended, and why people finally did do something."

Aegis actually surprised me by smiling, but I suppose he'd just figured out where I was going. He came in as if we had rehearsed a speech together with "Because even though nobody at her school cared because her bullies were popular kids with lawyer fathers or athletes the principal would protect, the police still cared."

"If an actual crime has been committed-" I said while actually asking to Carol.

"Yes!" she said desperately, and something in me growled a bit at the mental image of some rich entitled jock thinking he could get away with what he'd gotten away with.

"-then you'll find that people might care more than you'd ever think they would. I'm not going to say the police are perfect, but I didn't join the Wards because I believed that everything about the world was as bad as people always said it had to be."

"I- are you telling me to I should just go to the police?" she asked, not sure if we were helping her or abandoning her.

"Do you think you can?" I asked her softly.

"I-I don't know…" she began.

"Then you can catch a ride with us to the police station," Aegis said reassuringly, stepping in before I'd even given him a cue, "and start telling us what happened on the way. And by the time you get there, then I'm sure you'll be ready to tell them too."

I made sure I was behind her and out of her line-of-sight when I threw him an enthusiastic thumbs-up, and caught his little smile and nod back.

OK, one legitimate drawback of this damned helmet – your teammates can't see you grin!

I'd managed to swipe enough spare parts and discards during the Quantum Alternator Cannon project to come up with enough to build a hammerspace generator, thanks to my existing charges in Dimensional Engineering. I actually created a pocket dimension dimension like Professor Haywire's technology but it was more of a 'fold in space' type thing. Vista had let me take scans of her power in action when I'd asked and hadn't even inquired as to exactly which project it was helping me with, and that let me come up with a design that would turn the cupboard under the basement stairs into an actual full-on secret workshop.

I fired it up and tested it. Success!

Stealth Technology – 2 charges. Now that I had the start of the workspace, I needed to be able to hide it. Getting the parts for enough sensor bafflers and jammers to keep even Armsmaster from noticing this would not be easy, but not impossible. Given all the other demands on my time, it would take me at least a week to build all the things I'd need here. Less if I could concentrate on it alone, of course, but that's one of the few things I wasn't able to do right now.

Its not as if this was my only project, after all.

Despite already feeling like it was time and past time for bed, I instead did my regular update of all the logs and project journals and fact sheets and everything else I kept in what was now a high-grade, professionally-secured and armored desktop quantum computing cluster in the basement, with protections several times that which had stymied Tattletale.

This was my message in a bottle. I'd known almost since the beginning that I could die at any time, and I wanted at least some slim chance for my work to continue on without me. So I'd continually kept this up as best I could, the meta-knowledge that I possessed and the designs I hadn't actually gotten out of the conjectural stage yet, all of it ultra-encrypted and on this hard drive. Originally my dad's thumbprint was the only one that could have unlocked this machine after I was dead, but after I'd gotten to know her a while I'd added Amy's to the list. She didn't know what I was keeping in here of course, any more than Dad did, but she had at least been told the short form of the truth – that it was everything I'd hoped to live long enough to try and share with the world myself, and that it needed to be given to the right people if I died young.

Dad of course had been in denial of that very possibility – me dying young - up until the kidnapping, but if I legitimately did die he should at least remember the instructions. Amy had of course long since lived with the specter of possible death in the line of duty for much of her life, both for her sister and her acquaintances on the Wards, and I had no doubts she'd execute my last requests with professionalism and dispatch. So unless both of them somehow died along with me…

… well, it wouldn't be much of a chance for the world without my Inspired Inventor and my Blank to help develop and use this knowledge and hide it from the wrong precogs, but it was still at least something. Someday soon I hoped I might be able to add one or several of the Wards to the list of designated key-bearers, but one thing at a time.

Well, actually, a lot of things at a time. Between official projects, unofficial projects, Wards business in all its varieties, and the fact that between my little wing-ding over Canberra and my being on the record as having an emotional and physical overclocking power Miss Militia had started making me keep a crew rest log like I was a long-distance truck driver (and like them I lied on it, but only a little, honest), and school, and friends, because I'd already had the conversation with myself on work/life balance… well, something had to give somewhere. But hey, I had prana-bindu so who needed all that sleep, right?

I sat down wearily at the lunchroom table and started to inhale my food. Amy showed up a couple minutes later, took one look at me, and immediately stuck out her index finger and poked me in the cheek. Hard.

"Hey!" I said. "What happened to shoulders?"

"I can't get skin contact through your shirt," she said in her Doctor Amy voice, "and that was my diagnostic poke, not my friendly poke. How sleep-lagged are you?"

"… about eight hours minus this week." I admitted reluctantly.

"Are those normal hours or 'I already count my sleep in fractions' hours?" Amy said. "Taylor, do you want an exact breakdown of your fatigue poison levels right now? Or should I just tell you to stop, skipping. sleep. dammit."

"Next week should be less crazy, I promise," I said, raising one hand in the Girl Scout Oath position. "I just had a training cycle coincide with-"

"Dean told Vicky told me your schedule which is why I'm here telling you to slow down," she cut me off. "Seeing as how you've already ignored several hints by Carlos to do so, they're hoping you'll actually take the hint from your friendly medical advisor."

"When did you join the team?" I asked her sardonically.

"I should join the team," she cracked. "I could use the pay raise. But seriously, what's driving you so hard? I've met your dad, I know he's not the one pushing."

"Memories," I said before I caught myself, tired enough to actually let a bit of the truth slip out.

"Of who, those three bitches?" she said, dismissing the Trio she thought I'd been referring to with a contemptuous dismissive wave worthy of Queen Victoria at her most regal. "You'd already proved you were better than they were the day the doctor slapped you on the butt at your zeroth birthday party. May they rot in jail forever, and may you please slow down a little?"

"Sure, as soon as you take a vacation because you've stopped feeling personally responsible for every injury in a twelve mile radius," I snapped back, before lowering my head in shame. "Sorry."

Amy went red in the face with anger, shaking her head from side to side. "Taylor-" she said before she bit off her remark.

"Amy, I am legitimately sorry for saying that," I said shamefacedly. "That was entirely-"

"-the truth." she said quietly, her anger visibly fading away. "I mean, you really pissed me off with that crack… but you're not wrong." She slumped and sighed next to me. "We are really quite the pair, aren't we?"

"You ever done the thing where you catch yourself doing time-and-motion studies in your head of this project vs. that project vs. those things vs. projected lives saved?" I said after a long pause.

"No, because I hate calculus," Amy said. "I just draw the pretty graphs in my head without actually numbering them."

"God, this is stupid." I swore at myself. "I mean, the team has actual lesson modules on stress and burnout and why mandatory crew rest is a thing. The psychologists can literally prove it with charts and diagrams."

"Can I borrow a few of those?" Amy said curiously. "Seriously, I'd love to show them to my mom."

"Remind me at end of class, they're all in my bag in my locker," I said. "But… yeah. You know that voice that says there's always more to do. Always." I didn't make it a question.

"Every day," Amy said. "I mean, that's actually bothered me less since I got to know you, but every day I know you it seems to be bothering you more. I don't like to think that I'm just doing a misery transfer."

"It's not you, honest. I just… I just keep seeing… her. Over and over again. And that poor city."

You didn't ever say the name of the Simurgh out loud except during actual Protectorate-related business. And certainly not in the cafeteria at Arcadia.

"And maybe two weeks after that happened you and Chris already had the other thing up and running," Amy whispered heatedly. Even with the best anti-eavesdropper lookouts, or even a little Tinkertech gizmo in my schoolbag for discreetly muffling voices, you always euphemized or genericized Wards business in the lunchroom. "What abusive lunatic told you that you could have possibly done better than that, and do they have a face I can punch? Seriously, I don't care even if it was the grim bearded one. I will totally do it."

"You've already poked it," I said with grim humor.

Amy just looked at me. "Taylor…" she said, looking for words she couldn't find.

"Amy, you are helping me." I told her earnestly. "You, Vicky, the whole team, all of you. You're here, and you're you, and that's all that I can rationally ask you for. And it's enough."

"So why are your expectations of everybody else so rational and your expectations of yourself so not?" Amy asked. "And in before you can; hello Miss Kettle, I am Miss Pot. We are black and I know it."

"I'll make you a deal," I said. "If you ever figure out how to convince us to be more normal, then you come tell me right away. And vice versa."

"Done and done," Amy said, sticking her hand out for the official deal-making handshake. "And you must get a full eight hours' sleep tonight and never dare to let me catch you this much in body deficit again." she continued on with deliberately melodramatic tones. "Never dream that you can evade the Poke of Doom, Taylor. It sees all, it knows all, it shall pierce through all your lies and find you wherever you may hide."

"Slave driver. And I am totally making something that will let me check your sleep lag too, see if I don't."

"Shut up, you know you love me."

"Oh my! Is this what real friendship feels like?" I said with a deliberately childish voice, as if I were straight from one of the bad generations of My Little Pony.

"Ugh, feelings." she said with a deliberately over-the-top grimace, and we both felt a little more okay.

"So, did she agree?" Vicky said suddenly and loudly from right behind me, and we both jumped.

"I keep telling you, 'a bull in a china shop' is supposed to be a cautionary tale and not a social guideline!" I said. "And yes, I promised Amy that I'd catch up on the sleeps."

"Good, then I can tell Dean to tell Chris to not accidentally have your entrance passcard fail to work the next time you try to check in," Vicky said lightly while sitting down next to us. "Because they were about ready to escalate that far."

I looked at Amy past Vicky and shook my head disbelievingly, and she just shrugged at me. "Hey, you're the one wanted to make friends and stuff, you don't get to complain about the consequences now."

"I am not a 'consequence', I am a blessed gift that brings delight and joy to the lives of all that I survey," Vicky said with quiet dignity, her nose poised dramatically in the air, and even Amy had to laugh at Vicky's own particular style of hamming it up. Seriously, they might have been as different as chalk and cheese in most other ways but anybody who ever compared the Dallon sisters' respective senses of humor could entirely tell they'd been raised together without any other clue. "And hey, I was just thinking, if you're a good girl and take your naptime on schedule then maybe you could be rewarded with a double date on Saturday with me and Dean."

Amy startled at that and said. "Counter-offer: Taylor, how's about I give you a 48-hour flu for the weekend? Because you'd probably enjoy that more!"

"I was inviting you too, of course." Vicky said, honestly confused.

"Wouldn't that be a triple da-" I started to ask her, and then the ball dropped. Amy saw my expression do the facial equivalent of a car crash, and that was enough clue for her to finally pick it up too. She sighed and turned to Vicky while I was still trying to figure out the proper phrasing for this kind of soap opera.

"Vicky, I don't quite know how to break this to you," Amy said quietly but legitimately amused, "but Taylor is not my girlfriend."

"She isn't?" Vicky said, honestly flabbergasted. "But I thought- I mean you two are always- I-…" and everybody for several tables around looked over in honest confusion at the entirely unprecedented sight at Arcadia's resident queen of poise and charm doing a full-on faceplant in her sister's book bag. "Could you please poke me and tell me exactly when I got hit by the stupid ray?" Vicky said, her voice still muffled.

I finally lost it and started laughing, even if I did my best to keep it from carrying beyond the end of the table.

"And here I thought I was being so understanding-" Vicky moaned.

"You were being," I said, throwing Vicky a life-line. "No joke, you score ten out of ten at supporting your sister's orientation like a decent and tolerant human should. Especially since I already know she's not telling your mother until she's at least eighteen. Nobody could ask for better. It's just, out of the three young women at this table? Two of them like guys."

"To my eternal disappointment!" Amy said, winking at me to reassure me that no it wasn't.

" I don't blame you, Ames," Vicky said, lifting her head to look at me. "I mean, sure, there's not much up top but those legs? And the derriere? Taylor, if you'd let me give you a few posture lessons and better clothes you could model." Vicky nodded vigorously despite both our disbelieving expressions. "It's the truth, I swear! I would never kid anyone on that topic."

"Vicky, me and Amy are both life-long members of the ugly duckling club and know it," I told her. "You don't need to reassure either of us, we're cool with that."

"Just remember that ugly ducklings are sometimes swans," she said, giving us both a big one-armed hug from where she sat between us as we sighed and yielded to the inevitable.

Author's Note: More slice-of-life! A little more then I'd planned, honestly. It keeps writing itself even as the big plot items still keep playing keep-away with my muse. But hey, Worm arcs have gone into the high teens re: # of chapters so its not as if I'm close to running out of room yet.

Plus, I'm practicing more on that 'do your exposition while people are also talking and doing things' thing.

As for the middle bit... yes, Taylor had had been at least working something on if-I-die and messages in bottles from the start. What, did you think that desktop computer cluster getting such emphasis in 1.6 wasn't foreshadowing? Or that she was totally oblivious to the possibility of her own death?

Honestly, the main thing that irks me re: my Taylor and Amy's friendship is that you could literally devote an entire fic to doing nothing but showing it slowly expand... which I can't 'cause I need the space for other shit. So you get only the big highlight moments and if that feels unrealistically paced then hey, its time-lapse photography.

And no, this is not actually a prolonged psychological gambit by Taylor to subtly manipulate Amy into confessing her problems. Taylor's already decided that that's just not her way, and that she'll stick to being a legitimate friend and see how far that gets her. Failing that, then start with the attempts to deliberately prod things... but like a friend, not an SI manipulator.

As for the soap opera misunderstanding, stuff like that is fun for authors to write. And really, given how Taylor and Amy are always alone together at school its not like the wrong conclusion wouldn't be drawn eventually. And who better to draw it first than Brockton Bay's teen champion at leaping in headfirst?

Besides, Vicky was being ridiculously a ghost-at-the-feast and getting notably overdue for actual camera time, so, in she charges! Yeah, she's not as close to Taylor as the Wards or Amy but they're not strangers.

(add) There has been some reader conflusion so I'll put it officially into the AN: in this timeline, Vicky's already figured that Amy likes girls because I'm writing Vicky as not being a total idiot. Amy is still publicly closeted because she's afraid of Carol's possible reaction, but Amy's immediate trust circle (such as Vicky and Taylor) still know about it.

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

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Topic: Report Card - Binary

In: Boards ► Teams ► Wards ► Brockton Bay

Admin (Original Poster) (Moderator)

Posted on March 15, 2011:

So it's been almost a month since Brockton Bay got its latest Ward, and that means its time for our local capewatchers to have our traditional round-table about the new kid in school and how they're fitting in.

Confirmed facts on Binary so far:

She's openly acknowledged, both by herself and the Protectorate, as a Tinker.

There are absolutely zero Binary sightings or even Binary-compatible rumors prior to her official Wards debut. Our best evaluation is that her parents almost certainly took her to the PRT immediately after she triggered.

Neither she nor anyone else has admitted to knowing her Tinker specialty yet, although that's not vastly unprecedented given that Kid Win's been around for over a year and they haven't released his yet either.

She claims to have a 'lot of talent with' computers, to the point of picking her cape name based on a computer theme.

Her initial costume didn't have any of that new Tinker smell on it but looked as polished as Kid Win's own getup, if along an entirely different theme. KW's doing the 'brilliantly gleaming power armor' thing like Gallant but in different colors, and Binary's gear is more like an ultra-tech stealth suit with a medium armor layer.

LIke all the other Wards, the Protectorate is saying absolutely nothing about her trigger event or background.

So far she's done her debut press conference, several PSA tours, and occasionally been spotted doing patrols with one of the senior Wards. Standard practice would be to not let a Ward this new fly solo just yet.

Kid Win and Binary have both been officially credited with having built that disintegrator cannon that did the officially supervised clearing of the Boat Graveyard. Armsmaster was there as well but appeared merely to be observing and wasn't hands-on with any part of the event.

And that's what we know or consider to be virtually certain at this time. We now open the floor to anecdotes, theories, rumors, and commentary.

(Showing Page 1 of 2)

► Ham-and-Cheese (Veteran Member) (Power Guru)

Replied on March 15, 2011:

I'm really wondering if Binary is not a case of "rebranding" instead of a new trigger. Look, teenagers suddenly shoved in front of TV cameras and microphones for the first time ever just aren't that calm. Even Clockblocker, who's picked up microphone skills quickly enough that he has a career as a TV anchorman in his future if he ever chooses to go that route, wasn't that good out the gate and that was /with/ his preplanned comedy routine he'd been working on,

And I don't mean how pretty her talking points are because we all know that's the scriptwriting team talking and not the Ward. I mean how poised she is even while forced into unscripted remarks territory.

Just look at her first press conference when that jackass from SuperHype tried to ambush her with that no-win question. She just caught what he threw and tossed it back as casually as Ken Griffey dealing with a line drive to center field, and did it even faster than Deputy Director Renick could.

So, anybody hear of any other Tinker Wards out there stubbing their toe and needing the full relocation and makeover?

► Bagrat (The Guy In The Know) (Veteran Member)

Replied on March 15, 2011:

That theory does have some valid points, but it just doesn't fit with 'no solo patrols'. Normally /no/ Wards are supposed to patrol solo /ever/ regardless of experience or lack thereof, but as we all know they've been selectively ignoring that rule in Brockton Bay for years due to manpower concerns. If she really were a veteran wearing a rookie suit they'd never have kept her training wheels on for operational deployment purposes just to try and polish an already polished illusion a few percent more on the PR side, especially when its only cape analysts like us who are even bothering to plot sightings and do time charts anyway.

I entirely grant that she comes across on stage far better than most rookie Wards do but let us recall that there have been rare exceptions to that rule already. Some kids are just naturals, some already had a background in high school theater or suchlike pre-Trigger, and heck, for all we know Binary could have originally been trying to grow up to become an Olympic figure skater with all the things that lifestyle would entail before her parahuman powers arrived and changed everything.

Besides, there's no other Tinker Ward that I know of who has suddenly 'left to pursue further educational opportunities' or quit or just mysteriously started skipping public appearances anytime since at least New Year's.

► BondMaven (Veteran Member)

Replied on March 15, 2011:

Binary's build actually does look pretty 'Olympic gymnast' now that you mention it. And not just her figure but also her muscle tone. Or at least as much of her muscle tone as you can guess at underneath that costume, because somebody's mother clearly raised her not to go in for the tacky spandex and boob-plate aesthetic. Her costume is hardly unattractive, mind - whatever visual designer got his PRT paycheck for that setup definitely earned his money - but its also very functional. Good for her.

But there's more to us ladies than just our looks and ladylike manners, and so far I'm amazed that we're all still stuck on that instead of mentioning the elephant no longer in the room.

The Boat Graveyard. Folks, I never dreamed that Dragon's little downtown spelunking experiment would be only the /second/ most impressive use of Tinkertech that I'd be an eyewitness to in my lifetime, but there was several hundred thousand tons of rusting scrap in our city's harbor last month and now there isn't. And two teenagers apparently designed and built the giant fuck-off disintegrator cannon that did that all by themselves. Amazing? Yes. Frightening? Also yes.

Really, is this the sort of thing that the infamous PRT Tinkertech review board actually signs off on? I mean, let's definitely give all the kudos to Binary and Kid Win for pulling it off without a hitch, but I'm honestly amazed Armsmaster let them even try it.

► TTechTrakker (Veteran Member)

Replied on March 15, 2011:

BondMaven, its /Endbringers/. Not that either of them is a Protectorate cape in the first place but the PRT review board would rubber-stamp a blank check for Squealer or Leet if they thought they had a legitimate chance of getting an anti-Endbringer weapon come out the other end. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if they one day let String Theory back out of the Birdcage if she ever saned up enough to try and cut a deal with a viable schematic for taking Behemoth's head or suchlike. Its not like there was much else that she /hadn't/ been able to blow up when she really tried.

But coming back closer to home, didn't the press release say that the thing used in the Boat Graveyard was called a 'Quantum Alternator Cannon'? And didn't Kid Win post sometime last year about an 'Alternator Cannon' he was supposed to be working on that was intended for use in killing Endbringers? You know, like every new Tinker on the continent dreams about being able to do someday?

So of course nobody was surprised when he didn't ever post about that project again and it apparently went nowhere, because even Dragon hasn't built that magic bullet yet. But now I guess Kid Win must have actually had a legitimate piece of something that Binary was able to come along and fill in the missing piece for because she's on the Wards like, what, two weeks before she's out there getting co-creator credit on a Wave Motion Gun?

So to BB's two resident young geniuses I say: well done, and keep up the good work.

► Bagrat (The Guy In The Know) (Veteran Member)

Replied on March 15, 2011:

Stay calm, people. We certainly acknowledge the size of their accomplishment but nobody's actually turned Leviathan into a green mist so don't start reserving the banquet hall just yet. We're not even sure if their giant disintegrator will actually work on Endbringers at all, and unless the fight comes direct to Brockton Bay - which we all direly hope never ever happens - they're never going to let two Wards go out looking for any Endbringers to test it on.

Although I wouldn't be surprised if something very QAC-looking shows up at the next big fight being operated by Armsmaster or some other adult Protectorate Tinker. And if so, all my prayers that it works.

► SuperKidOne (Temp-banned)

Replied on March 15, 2011:

Who the hell does this -DELETED BY ADMIN-

She's just showing up at the end and touching stuff to try and take credit for all the months of work by the real teen Tinker in Brockton Bay!

SuperKidOne - We at PHO believe in the free expression of opinions, even when it comes to openly doubting the veracity of public statements made by Protectorate members. But we have zero tolerance for personal attacks of that nature being made against anyone, much less an underage young woman. Enjoy your one-week tempban and give thanks for the relative degree of leniency being shown to your first offense. -Admin

► Kid Win (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)

Replied on March 15, 2011:

I can only imagine what you just said and I'm glad that Binary mostly stays off of PHO so she didn't see it herself before it was removed. So let me say on her behalf, you're completely wrong and you're a jerk!

We've both been asked to let the Protectorate handle the public statements about the Quantum Alternator Cannon project but I'm allowed to say this much. Binary took credit for absolutely nothing that she hadn't legitimately earned credit for.

The above poster was entirely correct with his theory. I'd gotten stuck on my project before it was ever finished and I'd put it aside and left it there because nothing I tried was working. But when Binary arrived and we started working together she really did spot the missing piece of the puzzle that I hadn't, and somehow with her helping it just all just came together and we got more done in days than I used to get done in weeks. And now we've got a successful test-firing and Tinkers from all over the Protectorate pitching in on the whole project and I can't say what we're hoping happens next but its not small at all.

And Binary is a really nice girl who works very hard on everything she does and has more than enough stress in her life already and doesn't need creeps like you trying to give her more. And she's the best lab partner I've ever had, and anybody who wants to imagine some huge Tinker rivalry between me and her is so far off base that its not even funny.

So guys, I get that I have a fan club and that they want to give me all the credit whenever they can, but it doesn't work that way.

Kid Win - "You're a jerk" is pushing the boundaries of the no-personal-attacks rule. Even if your feelings are completely understandable and we've already had to temp-ban the jerk in question ourselves. You are officially given one warning that will expire in 72 hours. -Admin

► Antigone

Replied on March 15, 2011:

Well, that certainly escalated quickly.

Moving on, has anybody on the thread actually /met/ Binary? Let's hear those girl-on-the-street encounters, people!

► CSPrime

Replied on March 15, 2011:

I met Binary right after her first PSA event. I'm not going to say exactly what happened but I'd been having real trouble with someone else and I thought that a girl Ward around my age might understand what I was going through better than someone else.

And she didn't brush me off even though it was really late and they had to leave and she didn't just tell me it wasn't her department even though it wasn't parahuman business at all. She stopped, heard me out, explained a lot of things I'd never thought of, and then her and Aegis helped drive me to the police station so I could give a statement. And she was totally patient and nice the entire time.

I'm not going to say what my situation was about either because I can't because the case is still in the system, but I will say that I'm not having any trouble with that guy anymore and I'm glad.

So that was my own anecdote with Binary. Even without any TV cameras or scripts or anything, she still cared.

► Ekul

Replied on March 15, 2011:

Now that's the sort of thing we're talking about. Good job, Binary, and the best of luck to you going forward from here, CSPrime.

So, seems like this latest lady Ward actually seems to be a decent young woman underneath the mask. Her teammates clearly like her, one in particular, and now we have this.

I guess the Wards were overdue for some good karma after having to put up with Shadow Stalker for so long. We all remember what every street encounter story with /her/ sounded like, don't we folks?

End of Page. 1, 2

(Showing Page 2 of 2)

► Vista (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)

Replied on March 15, 2011:

Binary is Shadow Stalker's exact opposite in so many ways that not even Binary's biggest computer could count them all. You have /no idea/. I literally could not even begin to tell you.

And yes, we all like her. We're the Brockton Bay Wards and we're all supposed to have each other's backs no matter what comes down the line, and Binary - unlike /some/ people -already understood that from the very beginning.

► Bagrat (The Guy In The Know) (Veteran Member)

Replied on March 15, 2011:

Hey, two Wards sightings in one day in a Report Card thread. It's been a while since that happened. I notice Binary herself isn't here? Is she lurking?

► Vista (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)

Replied on March 15, 2011:

Like Kid Win said, she's not really on PHO much.

► Admin (Original Poster) (Moderator)

Replied on March 16, 2011:

So, we'll be leaving the thread open for a while to catch further anecdotes if any come along but our first Report Card for Binary seems to have reached a consensus:

She's got good people skills both up-close and in front of audiences, and seems to be very far away from the socially awkward Tinker archetype.

She's by all appearances an excellent team player and judging by their statements and attitudes has 'clicked' right away with all of her fellow Wards.

There hasn't been any major fights with Binary on-record yet so we still don't know what her real combat capability is like. She can't be a total marshmallow however because anybody with that much of Vista's professional respect has to be contributing /something/, everybody knows Little Miss Badass' attitude towards dead weight.

Her Tinker specialty is either helping other Tinkers reach Tinker-plus or else she's just that much of a genius, because her first big Tinker project, even if it was a collab, is currently undergoing strategic review almost all the way up to the Triumvirate. So we're certainly expecting some more big Tinkering from her in the future.

And so, our local capewatching community has concurred that Binary's first Report Card grade is: A.

End of Page. 1, 2

Author's Note: I figured that if I was going to get frustrated in an online argument today it might as well be a fictional one, so I decided to take a pause and do a PHO interlude instead. So, that lets us get in public reactions to Binary's first month - which outside of the Boat Graveyard was largely slice-of-life - and some feedback on past events. Plus a mention of how Carol's story ended, of course.

I also love creating PHO community lore such as a tradition of having 'Report Card' discussions periodically about Wards, to try and rate how they're performing in the public eyes.

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

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Threadmarks Interlude 3-C: Kaiser / Director Piggot New

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cliffc999

Jul 21, 2019

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#3,569

Interlude 3-C: Kaiser / Director Piggot

Warning: Neo-Nazi POV segment

Kaiser

"How many casualties?" I asked Victor again, as he stood in front of my desk as stolidly as he ever did. Victor's ability to absorb skills from others had been put to great use by him over the years, granting him the collective knowledge of dozens of highly trained PRT agents, law enforcement personnel, soldiers, analysts, and intelligence operatives. Although no physical aspect of him was overtly parahuman, his particular parahuman power let what would be fantasies of action-movie competence for other men come true for him whenever he wished.

Not that I often used Victor for more overt tasks. Hookwolf and the other Empire capes much like him were not only entirely serviceable in such roles but genuinely enjoyed serving in them. And there were always more targets in a sea of filth such as Brockton Bay that they could be sent against to keep them harmlessly occupied and in practice while awaiting another day where their services would be legitimately necessary in the greater scheme of things. No, Victor served me far better as a factotum, an organizer, and a researcher.

And also as both counter-intelligence chief and spymaster.

"Eight ABB gangers and three of their slaves," Victor said matter-of-factly. "Kayden still obeyed your orders about maintaining low visibility in general, but even without lighting up the drug den from the outside that still didn't stop her from just going inside before turning on the glare. They must have just thought she was another ignorant woman from the Towers looking for thrills in all the wrong places before-"

"-she killed them all." I said. "But while I certainly have no objection to Lung's mixed-race filth or the whores who service them meeting untimely deaths, her recent tendencies are becoming a bit alarming. And in addition to the risk to us there's also the risk to her. She's forgetting that she's not invulnerable. And attacking the ABB carries with it a unique potential for swift retribution, should any of her targets ever succeed in getting out an alarm in time." I sighed and asked the next necessary question, fearing the answer. "And the PRT response?"

"We're still lucky so far," Victor replied to my great relief. "No use of parahuman powers – at least, none with any living witnesses left to report to anyone - means they wouldn't have it as a case unless their computers and analysts saw something suspicious in the Brockton Bay police blotter after the fact. And since she was intelligent enough to set the house on fire before leaving, all the clean-up crew saw was another bunch of idiot meth-heads burning themselves to death in their own lab accident. It's not like enough of them don't die every week that the city can afford to autopsy every one of them, after all."

"But this lucky streak can't continue forever," I said. "Sooner or later she'll do something we can't cover up."

"No," Victor agreed. "Max, can I have a word?"

"You think I'm causing the problem?" I said to him quietly.

"No, I think you're not seeing the problem," Victor replied. "Kayden's not just a grieving mother, and this is not just a stage that's going to pass. Oh, she's all of that as well-"

"Aster was my daughter too, damn it!" I shouted at him.

Victor stopped and looked at me, and sat down in the chair across from me. Without speaking he reached to the bottle of brandy on the desk and topped up my drink before pouring himself one of his own.

"I've been your friend as well as one of your lieutenants for years, Max," Victor said. "You know I wouldn't say this if I didn't have to."

"Yes," I said, exhaling sharply and regaining control of myself. "And part of your job is to bring things to my attention that I'm overlooking. So, what am I overlooking?"

"Aster isn't just a tragic loss to Kayden, like she is to you or the rest of your family," Victor said. "She's a symbol now as well. A symbol of all the corruption and filth in Brockton Bay, but one that lets take Kayden take all of the emotion she might feel about that large and complex a problem and concentrate it down into a single mental image, a single feeling that's crystal clear in her mind all the time. So now Kayden sees the problem as being equally clear and simple, when we both know it's not. And so-"

"The balance of power that's served us so well for so long in Brockton Bay is inevitably going to go to hell in a handbasket. Because my ex-wife's renewed passion for the cause is inextricably welded to her… tunnel vision on the topic. And of course, she cannot be reasoned out of this opinion." I stated, not questioned.

"You can't reason someone out of a course of action they didn't reason themselves into," Victor agreed. "And you certainly can't tell Aster's mother to emotionally let go of her daughter so soon. You might as well try to order Brad to take a life-long vow of nonviolence, and you'd have better odds of him keeping it."

"And Theo's current condition?" I asked him, grateful for at least a momentary change of topic.

"Still in shock, but still safe at that boarding school you arranged for him after everything happened," Victor nodded. "The school's giving him a grief counselor. On the more physical side, I have people looking out for him there 24/7. If you wanted we could send Rune out there too."

"The bodyguards alone should be sufficient," I told Victor. "If things get much worse, Rune might be needed here." And then I sat and thought for what was for me an uncharacteristically long time.

"I can't reason with Kayden on this matter. I can't safely indulge her on this matter. And-" I exhaled. "-I can't kill her. Estranged or not, exigent necessity or not, she's still the mother of my daughter. The woman I married."

"I wasn't even beginning to suggest that," Victor agreed with me quickly.

"So what were you suggesting?" I asked him, hoping for an answer.

"Max, what I was hoping was that this would be yet another one of the occasions where you proved that you were legitimately smarter than I was," Victor said. "Because right now, I don't know."

"Keep doing everything you can to aim her anger where it's still of immediate use, and to conceal it from the authorities," I said quietly. "And I'll do the same. And we'll both hope that she'll eventually give us an opening to reach her. While we still have time."

"Yes sir."

I forced the next words out of my mouth without hesitation, without weakness, even through the sick taste filling the back of my mouth.

"And should the worst happen and we eventually run out of time, then we would have to finish our unfinished discussion." I ground out painfully.

"Yes sir."

Victor made his goodbyes and left, and I walked across my office to stare down at the city of Brockton Bay from my penthouse.

I yet again cursed the worthless drunken subhuman whose squalor had caused my daughter's death and was causing Kayden's slow descent into madness, and yet again wished that they had lived long enough to be brought before me alive. Perhaps the opportunity to help myself and Victor and Brad put that bitch through a scientific education of her errors could have eased Kayden's shattered heart enough that she would have not committed herself to this course of action…

But the facts remained as they were regardless of any personal feelings on the matter. The Empire Eight-Eight had already taken as much of Brockton Bay as we could before the eventual backlash risked consuming all that we had built. All of my plans, all of our actions, had fitted with wondrous neatness into the overall mosaic. Our dominance of the underworld economy dovetailed neatly with Medhall's position as the leading corporation of the city to give us control of everything worth having. Lung had enough of the leftovers to feel his petty ambitions be fulfilled and the Merchants rooted in enough of the scraps to exist as a useful buffer state and absorber of immediate tensions between us. We had more capes than the Protectorate and the Wards combined, a suitable number of sympathizers within the local police and city government, and by great good fortune our several inside sources within the local PRT office had escaped Director Piggot's internal purges after that fool Calvert had surprisingly been revealed as Coil.

I gave a small mental nod to my late rival acknowledging his notable achievement at infiltrating the PRT so deeply and his own, albeit lesser, emulating of my corporate strategies with his Fortress Construction to my Medhall, but at the same I also acknowledged the useful lesson to be learned from his death. Coil had had talent, and even a legitimate measure of success, but he had not sufficiently diversified his base nor amassed sufficient forces to ensure an enduring power structure before making his play. In hindsight his plan to eventually disgrace Piggot by sabotaging from within and then take her place was obvious, and from that it was not difficult to deduce an eventual desire of his to rise to dominate both sides of the board. As 'Director Calvert' he would play the white pieces, as Coil he would move the black, and no matter which skirmish resulted in victory for which side he alone would forever profit.

A beautiful dream… and also the dream of a megalomaniac, not a visionary. A madman too obsessed with what he wished for to remember never to confuse his wishes with objective reality. Which why Coil had died, of course. Real life was quite not as willing to reward hubris as Coil had imagined it would be.

Which philosophical observation did nothing to comfort my dilemma just now, because I truly did not want to kill my Kayden and yet barring her eventually choosing to return to reason and re-accept our posture of limited involvement, I could see no eventual path before me save to do so. It's not as if I could actually conquer Brockton Bay and begin a true purification of all its subhuman elements, after all.

Not with the way things currently stood.

Director Piggot

I swore under my breath yet again. Sometimes this damned job made Sisyphus' treadmill look like mandatory bed rest. You took your attention off of something, even something that had been working perfectly fine for months, for just a few damned weeks while you turned around to fix some other catastrophe, and then that first thing would immediately go to hell.

Despite my success in recruiting Binary for the Wards, I hadn't had much if any time to actually follow her case in the weeks that followed. Closing out the Coil investigation and rooting out all his damned moles would have been a full-time job even if I'd been born twins, but after months of making me wonder if anyone was even reading any reports I ever sent up the chain PRT Command in Washington chose now of all moments to jump straight in with both big, clumsy, micro-managing feet.

First they'd made me send back all the agents I'd asked Armstrong to bring down from Boston for me even before Coil's remains were cold because that was 'outside proper procedure', promising instead to immediately replace them with dedicated Internal Affairs specialists from the central office. And those promises turned out to be worth as much as any other promises from DC, as the specialists arrived a day late, a dollar short, in inadequate numbers, and not properly briefed on the job they were expected to do here. And they came bundled with an officiously stupid assistant deputy director who was under the delusion he was my temporary replacement, not the high-level supervisor Washington had promised could handle the day-to-day of the investigation under me while I spared at least some time for my ongoing responsibilities as well.

But they hadn't sent me here to cry over the things I couldn't do but to accomplish the things I could, so I left all my routine duties to Renick and Armsmaster for several weeks while I took personal charge of the mole hunt and wrestled it as best I could back onto the tracks that Washington seemed perversely bound and determined to derail it from. So most of the prosecutions vs. Coil's insiders were going to go through after all, and the few that had partially wriggled free were still being dismissed with prejudice from the PRT. But I still knew the job hadn't been as thoroughly as it could have been done if I'd simply been left free to do it from the beginning. Sometimes I honestly believed I could have done more with no extra agents 'helpfully' sent to me from the central office. Our tax dollars at work, indeed.

But the fact that I'd run myself into an exhausted collapse every night for several weeks on end handling that one problem, until I could finally call it as done as it was ever going to be given the circumstances and get back to my regular duties, was not the current crisis. Oh no, I wasn't being that lucky. The latest clusterfuck just had to be-

"Armsmaster," I said to him.

"Director-" he began urgently. "You have to believe me, that girl is dangerous! You yourself agreed to that back at the very beginning!"

"I agreed that Binary was potentially dangerous," I corrected him. "But you are potentially dangerous. I am potentially dangerous. Hell, Vista is in the 'If she ever went completely berserk we might have call Eidolon to help hold her down!' category of potentially dangerous! But potentially dangerous simply means we decide on what we could do about it ahead of time and then wait to see if we actually need to do it or not," I verbally pounded at him. "Exactly what part of that is unclear to you? She is not actually dangerous until after she actually does something dangerous!" I held up a hand to forestall his reaction. "Something new! Her actions in Coil's base were already reviewed at length and the verdict is already in, she was not crazy or homicidal, she was merely that desperate. I can think of at least two of your fellow Protectorate members who'd have done the same thing if forced into her exact shoes, let alone a number of agents in this building!"

"And you don't see the slightest thing suspicious or deceptive as to how everybody in contact with her seems to grow so infatuated with her? Does that seem normal to you, Director?" he hectored me.

"I will admit that part of it looks like a young woman deliberately straining herself to try and make the best impression on her new co-workers and chain of command possible," I granted him. "Of course, since that young woman is more than intelligent enough to realize that our initial impression of her could have, charitably speaking, not exactly been the best impression? Or that the PRT could potentially be doing a great deal more than we have to interfere with her life were we not given sufficient reassurance? Then with all that its not surprising that she's trying extra-hard to reassure us of her good intentions," I said lecturingly, before taking a deep breath and continuing.

"Armsmaster, her deliberately putting her best foot forward whenever she can doesn't automatically mean that she's lying, anymore than taking extra-special care to mind your manners during a job interview as compared to your everyday office behavior is lying." Only after I'd said it did I realize that the analogy would almost certainly be lost on Armsmaster, who had never actually needed to interview for a conventional job in his entire life. "And regardless of what your opinions are on the matter, the fact remains that your behavior has escalated beyond the point where it can be tolerated any further."

"I am not overreacting," Armsmaster swore urgently, in exactly the tone of voice someone used when overreacting. "Everything about her adds up to one consistent and clear pattern, and yet for some inexplicable reason I am the only person in this building who even begins to perceive it!"

I stared at him incredulously. "And that didn't suggest that you were the one who was wrong?"

Armsmaster literally ground his teeth, in what I had honestly believed up until now was merely a cliché. "I am the most experienced Tinker in the entire Protectorate," he said. "I am far more competent to judge the potential danger of another Tinker than anyone possibly could be!"

"Did you just suggest incompetence on my part?" I asked with dangerous mildness, and Armsmaster began to realize that he had overreached.

"Director, I-" he began to apologize.

I shook my head.

"You have inspected Binary's home and working spaces at a frequency multiple times higher than that of any other Tinker you have ever worked with, and to a greater degree than even Probationary Ward Tinkers usually endure," I stated. "You have categorically rejected every Tinkertech submission she has ever made on any and all grounds possible, to the point you are a consistent negative vote even when pitted against the otherwise unanimous recommendations of the remainder of the board. Your actions and personal interactions have reached the point where the Protectorate would be potentially vulnerable against a lawsuit brought for harassment!"

"Harass-?" Armsmaster started to break in incredulously, and I verbally marched right over him.

"You are even on your third request for a reversal of the original authorization for a Tinkertech project that has received a unanimous positive recommendation from literally every step in the Protectorate chain of command! From Legend himself on down! Dragon's already retrofitting one of her heaviest combat suits to bring the refined Quantum Alternator Cannon to the next Endbringer fight, when and where one occurs, so we can hopefully see if it will actually hurt the bastards."

"That QAC is the prime example of that girl's dangerous obsession with weapons of mass destruction! And there's no way that a madwoman and a sub-par teenaged Tinker came up with anything stable, sane, or effective! Trying to use that thing in the next Endbringer fight will only lead to more casualties than would otherwise occur!" Armsmaster thundered.

"How would you know anything about the QAC's inner workings?" I asked him scornfully. "You're literally the only senior Tinker in the Protectorate – or the Guild – that's refused a direct invitation to participate in the project. Outside of trying to junk the original field test submission you haven't even bothered to look at it, much less at any of the future refinements of it. And now you want me to accept that you are right, and the entire review process and multiple of your most well-respected professional colleagues are all wrong."

Armsmaster turned positively purple.

"I wish I could say I don't know what's eating you, but I think I do," I told him. "It's the same reason you needed 'interpersonal counseling' about Dauntless. You feel threatened by anyone who might ever beat you at your own game. Only in Dauntless' case you at least eventually convinced yourself he wasn't a 'real' Tinker so you could still feel superior about that. But Binary is a real Tinker, and what's worse for you an incredibly precocious one, and what's worst of all one that seems to synergize with other Tinkers. Every time she's invited into a collaborative Tinker project, it seems to get ahead of schedule by leaps and bounds. Dragon's seen it, Kid Win's seen it, and if you hadn't kept treating her as if she smelled worse than Mush you might have been allowed to see it too." I shook my head. "Purely and simply, you're afraid that if she's allowed to go on to a full Protectorate career then she'll eventually put you in the shade. Or worse, that you'd eventually have to accept her help."

"That's another thing. She pretends to like and be open to everyone else, but she's always been avoiding me! Always, even before I started inspecting her! Why would she do that if she wasn't afraid of being found out for what she really was?" Armsmaster thundered.

"Did you read her entire file or just the parts that were about engineering?" I asked him. "Because the answer to your question is literally written all over it."

"I don't see-"

"Binary is a recovering victim of long-term emotional abuse," I spat out at the unbelievably stubborn idiot. "Her former best friend betrayed and abused her for years. The school system mocked her and treated her as the criminal even when she wasn't because the other students were 'more important'. Her peer group ostracized her based solely on lies and rumors. Her father neglected her for years due to his own mental breakdown. The other one of her chief tormentors was a Ward, our Ward, so she could even potentially perceive that the Protectorate had been out to get her you damned fool! We discussed that during the initial meetings about the Shadow Stalker situation right after it happened, remember? You should, because you were there!" I thundered at him, before sighing and slumping wearily in my chair.

"That young woman can say with exact literal truth that before she met us, every other adult authority figure in her entire life, everyone she had been taught that she should trust and rely on to protect her as a child, had either abandoned her or actively participated in her torment. Even her father screwed up his end after her mother died." I shook my head regretfully. "And if there's one thing that survivors of prolonged trauma become, it's hypervigilant against the same types of trauma! By now Binary can probably smell another abusive adult from a mile upwind! And that's exactly what you were, you damned fool! Another abusive adult! One who'd already decided before he'd even started getting to know her that everything she did was already wrong, and that he would be justified in taking any excuse to harass her and punish her that he could."

Armsmaster glared back at me as if he were the one being betrayed, the incredible damned fool, as I continued.

"So of course she avoided you from the outset. Because she knew exactly what she might be in for from you. Because she was afraid you'd just use your authority to further harass and bully her like Principal Blackwell and the rest had at Winslow. And at this point, it looks like she was right." I shook my head in sheer disgust at him. "It honestly restores a bit of my nonexistent faith in God to realize that even with all that against her, with you against her, she still was able to force herself to return to this building again and again. To let herself still have any trust at all that her fellow Wards and Miss Militia and myself would not mistreat her or ignore her like everyone else she'd ever dared to trust had done."

"I am the head of the ENE Protectorate-" Armsmaster began desperately.

"So you're already at the part where you curl up and hide behind the regs that say I can't formally punish you for anything less than an explicit violation, as opposed to merely the implicit ones you have committed?" I said scornfully. "You think I can't get rid of you because I am the ENE PRT Director and you are the ENE Protectorate Director and we are in theory commanders of separate but equal branches." I smiled. "But you are in error."

"You cannot-"

"I cannot relieve you of your position without your being caught in a far more material breach than you have been," I agreed. "But Legend can, as your direct superior and the head of the entire Protectorate."

"Legend wouldn't-"

"Legend already knows Binary's name because the QAC project has already crossed his desk. I got the congratulatory phone call from him about the project's being authorized for prototype field deployment at the next Endbringer fight yesterday," I said to his astonishment. "I would have already called Binary and Kid Win into my office to forward his congratulations to them, as they have well and truly earned, were it not for the fact that being prompted to actually look at Wards business for the first time again in weeks led me directly to what you were doing. I have spent all of yesterday and much of today investigating those matters, I have called you in here to hear your side of the story, and I am not impressed at all by your defense of your actions. So shut the fuck up and accept what's coming."

Armsmaster glared at me in impotent rage, and I huffed and continued.

"You will remain here in Brockton Bay because our manpower needs are still what they are, and I don't like what my instincts are telling me might be building up in the near future in this town no matter how quiet our official reports are. I won't be calling Legend to tell him what an utter ass you've been – yet - because that is a trump card I am reserving for your next offense, should you be so incredibly stupid as to give me one. You will even remain in command of the ENE Protectorate's field operations, as you are legitimately competent at that. But you have demonstrated for all time your absolute incompetence at anything having to do with the Wards, so they're not your problem any longer."

"But Director-"

"The Wards are now Miss Militia's. She will supervise them at need, she will discipline them at need, she will act to get them the appropriate resources and training and support and monitoring. Including at-home monitoring," I emphasized. "All of the responsibilities that were once yours in regard to the Wards are now hers and hers alone and your input is not desired there at any level. You will of course cooperate and reschedule Miss Militia's Protectorate duty hours as necessary to reasonably accommodate these additional duties of hers, using my definition of 'reasonably'."

"Yes Director," he choked out.

"You are also out of the Tinkertech review process in any matter involving Binary. Or Kid Win, given your bias and his close collaboration with her work." I stated. "Completely out. You won't even attend those meetings anymore."

"But you need me there!" he said desperately.

"When the only contribution you've ever made to the process since she arrived here has been consistently negative?" I pointed out. "No. Kid Win's track record is sufficient that review for him was largely becoming a formality anyway except for larger-scale projects, and while Binary still has a legitimate need for even her smaller designs to undergo a safety and process review by an experienced Tinker I feel entirely confident that Dragon will volunteer her assistance in that regard," I told him. "Seeing as how your consistent objections are, to date, the only substantial reason why she was not already directly involved in her unofficial protégé's official monitoring. And while Dragon is not officially a Protectorate Tinker I somehow doubt that the higher echelons of the review process will feel that her qualifications are inadequate. Especially not given how many of the Protectorate and PRT's most critical infrastructures she helps maintain for us."

"This is a mistake! This is a horrible mistake and we will all regret it soon enough!" Armsmaster pleaded with me.

"The only mistake is whatever jealousy and tunnel vision ever let you see a fifteen-year-old girl as a dire threat to your self-assurance in the first place," I said. "And if I even think you're going to try anything again behind my back I will call Legend, and ask him to invoke his authority to order you to psychological counseling. Which I strongly suggest you get for yourself anyway, before somebody else has to get it for you."

"Is that all, Madam Director?" Armsmaster asked me as tonelessly as a robot.

"It's all that I think that you're capable of accepting - at the moment," I replied flatly. "Dismissed."

Author's Notes: A look at where the Brockton Bay Nazis are right now, notes about the slowly gathering tension, and the scheduled jerking-short of Armsmaster.

As for my interpretation of Kaiser, I see him as evil but not insane. Hence the 'I don't want to kill my ex-wife', along with '... but if she pushes me much further, I'm going to have to.' both in the same scene. Also, with no canon word I can find on how long Victor has been with the E88, I've made him the consigliere because he's very suited for that job skill-wise.

Minor note: for those wondering who the hell 'Brad' is, that's Hookwolf's first name.

Re: Cauldron and the QAC project, while it has reached Legend's desk right now its still ultimately just another tech proposal that the Protectorate hopes will finally kill the Endbringers this time. Like the last how many?

So currently Cauldron is going 'Yeah, yeah, whatevs' and carrying on with their business. If and when an Endbringer actually dies, then cue the jawdrops. And not just from Cauldron. :)

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

Check out my (on hiatus) Worm fanfic, A Ghost of a Chance!

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cliffc999

Jul 21, 2019

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cliffc999

cliffc999

Jul 22, 2019

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Evolution 3.5

It would have been really unkind to Armsmaster to point out how much easier the air in the Wards quarters had become to breathe now that there was a zero percent chance of a random Armsmaster interrupt, which is why none of us had actually said it out loud yet. But that didn't change the truth, which was that Miss Militia was enormously better at being our full-time handler than he had been. While he'd certainly been by far the worst to me, there wasn't any of the other Wards that could say they had any real respect for him outside of a professional superheroing context where he was legitimately a leading light in the field, and certainly none of them had had any actual encouragement or positive feedback from him.

Poor Chris in particular had blossomed so much simply from having a cooperative and tolerant lab partner in me for a little while that I fumed at how much of a condescending dick Armsmaster must have been to him in all their prior months of lab work together for him to have been that wrapped up in self-doubts and self-deprecation when I'd first started working with him. I hadn't even had to think of some clever manipulation to let him discover that his specialty had been modular design, which fact I'd still been trying to figure out a way to drop into the conversation without being either condescending or blatant. During our work on the Quantum Alternator Cannon, at the stage where we'd been deepest into taking apart the original Alternator Cannon and listing out which elements would be easiest to repurpose into the new Quantum Alternator Cannon's structure, which would need to be rebuilt from scratch and which could be outright junked, he'd had the 'Eureka!' moment about how his design process focused more on putting together already-existing discrete subsystems to form new larger systems entirely on his own. And from there I'd been able to walk him through figuring out that his suddenly drifting off from a project and building new random module at the time had only partly been his ADHD tendencies and largely his own Tinker specialty trying to nudge him into figuring out what it was really all about. Armsmaster had clearly been one of those brilliant specialists in his field that was very good at doing but very bad at teaching.

Now, on the mentorship scale it's not as Miss Militia had suddenly become our surrogate parent and tucked us into bed at night and fed us chicken soup when we were sick either. On an objective scale Miss Militia wasn't that far behind Armsmaster at being a very reserved and formal person. Even when she'd been offering honest emotional comfort, as she had to me right after Canberra, it still presented more as 'guidance counselor who was legitimately good at their job' and less as 'foster mom/big sister'. But the simple fact that she didn't judge you until after she'd found out what was really going on to the best of her ability and that she didn't bring her ego to work still made dealing with her a massive relief compared to how it had been before.

John's meta-knowledge of Worm wasn't complete, but it had contained among other things a full read of the Leviathan fight in Brockton Bay and its immediate aftermath. Including the part where Armsmaster's desperation to salvage a failing career with the glory of somehow solo'ing Leviathan had led him to deliberately and knowingly plot cold-blooded murder and violate the Endbringer Truce. He'd sabotaged tracking armbands to deliberately put a gap in the search-and-rescue coverage, lured people into specific positions for Leviathan to kill as bait to lure the Endbringer to where Armsmaster wanted him, and then leapt out and went all 'Your evil ends here today, vile villainous monster!' to try and solo Leviathan with his untested nano-thorn halberd. And even leaving the, ahem, debatable wisdom of that final act entirely aside, even without that part the fact remained that Armsmaster engineered the deaths of something like half a dozen people and unhesitatingly violated the Endbringer Truce because to Armsmaster doing all that was still less awful a scenario than having to accept life without his fame and his rank.

And given that one of those people story-Armsmaster had set up to die had been Skitter, who'd been the only one of his intended victims to actually survive his plot by sheer good fortune, I simply hadn't been able to keep that whole sequence from flashing through my mind every time I laid eyes on Armsmaster. I certainly wasn't one of story-me's fans but even she hadn't deserved that. Particularly not that despite whatever other wrongs she'd committed in her life her actions during the Leviathan fight proper had still been entirely legitimate.

So yes, I'd been almost as paranoid of him all along as he'd been of me. Since he was my superior officer as head of the ENE Protectorate I hadn't disrespected him, disobeyed him, or refused to be present when my presence was required, but I simply wasn't going to risk trusting him until after he'd begun to show me something that would mean he could risk being trusted. Which I hadn't entirely closed out the possibility of happening. People could change, after all. People could sometimes be different than what the stories about them had been told. And perhaps a different beginning could mean a different ending. That had already been true in several other cases…

… but not Armsmaster's, because his silent overwatch disguised as that 'social worker' on my initial interviews with the BBPD about the locker had been the least tense interaction we'd ever had. From that point on it had been straight down the slippery slope to hell. Something about me had clearly raised his hackles from the first day I'd been presented as the next upcoming Ward, and it had only gotten worse at every step of the way. I'd started getting Winslow flashbacks at all the various petty tactics an authority figure could use to hinder, harass, or intimidate a teenaged student while still being able to piously claim that 'they were just doing their job', but despite his reputation for being socially inexperienced in so many other ways Armsmaster could have given Principal Blackwell lessons in how to be a petty bureaucratic tyrant.

I'd like to say that his downfall was the result of a clever plan on my part but to be honest, it wasn't. Between everything else I'd been juggling simultaneously and the simple fact I couldn't think of anything to try and game the system with that wouldn't have just given Armsmaster's accusations that I was a manipulative little Emma trying to game the system some actual weight, I'd had to fall back on my longest-used and least-liked coping strategy; to just sit there like a dummy and take it. I'd honestly thought of taking my concerns to the Director, seeing as how I if not the other Wards had been given a prior open-door-policy invitation to her office, but I was already aware that she'd been running herself from can-see to can't-see almost seven days a week to try and stay on top of the chaos that was the post-Coil PRT mole hunt. Which was bad for anyone and still worse for someone with her ongoing health problems. So I accepted I had to be a lower priority than that and just gritted my teeth and waited for when the time pressure on Director Piggot would be less insane and I could afford to bring this to her.

But joy of joys, she'd been sufficiently on top of things to notice Armsmaster's mental malfunctions herself as soon as the investigation wrapped up and she could start to resume normal routine, and Armsmaster had been relieved. He was still leader of the ENE Protectorate but now his policy of dumping most of the drudge-work in superivising the Wards on Miss Militia while still reserving the right to come in and lay down the judgements and discipline and suchlike himself whenever he wanted had been nixed. Miss Militia was given actual authority over the Wards to match the responsibilities that Armsmaster had already been dumping on her, to her great relief, and we got a single adult supervisor to deal with instead of one and a half competing ones that hadn't been coordinating well at all.

So, recent developments had made the Wards so happy that we would have been ready to throw an Armsmaster-is-gone party. And while we certainly couldn't have actually done that because that would have been epically rude, that didn't mean I couldn't bring presents.

"Okay, guys!" I said cheerfully while Chris and I were hauling the boxes into the Wards console/ready room, with Miss Militia walking in behind us. "A very merry un-birthday to you all, so line up and get your gift bags!"

Missy turned around from the console to look at us coming in. "Cool! But what's the occasion?"

Miss Militia fielded that for us. "Wards regulations allow Tinkers to share useful Tinkertech with their team if they can demonstrate safety of operation sufficiently for the review board and receive the permission of their official Protectorate supervisor. Binary's application to share several items of gear has finally finished the approval process." Everybody in the room clearly heard the unspoken Because unlike Armsmaster, I was actually willing to sign it.

"Wait, this is a thing now?" Dean asked. "As in generally, and not just the special dispensation I got for my armor? Chris, why didn't you ever apply for this before? Is it a new program?"

"No," he sighed. "I'd just never been told about it before. Taylor is the one of us that Armsmaster had kept forcing to reread the rule book with how closely he kept vetting her applications, so she's the one who found out about it."

"So what are we getting?" Carlos broke in diplomatically, as Chris and I started laying out the packages.

"First up, your new official Wards anti-ballistic costume underlayer," I said as we started laying it out. "This is based on the original body armor jammies I was making as part of my home-brew before joining the Wards, but upgraded with certain chemical principles taken from containment foam research that I had access to now that I'm on the team. Its weakest versus blunt impact so don't go trying to take a punch from Lung just yet, and sufficient force behind a sufficiently sharp edge will still sever the woven fibers so don't get too close to Hookwolf either, but as you can see from the demonstration…"

While I had been speaking, Chris had been setting up one of those big water bottles used in office water machines on a chair at the other side of the room, and then draping one of the ballistic underlayers over it. Miss Militia nodded, waved at everyone to stand back, and her power flicked into an M-4 assault rifle with advanced tactical silencer (we were in a confined room without hearing protection, after all) that she brought up to her shoulder as soon as Chris was back on our side of the room and used to fire a three-round burst directly into the anti-ballistic layer, then another burst after that. I walked over after she'd put away her weapon and lifted the cloth to show that the thin plastic water bottle had remained completely unpunctured, even if it had dented some.

"Ta-da! Now those of us who aren't Aegis or wearing power armor already don't have to worry about stray shots from getting too close to a gang fight anymore, or at least we can worry as much less about it as the field agents in their tactical gear do. Only unlike their tac gear we can move all day in this without encumbrance because it weighs less than five pounds and fits under a costume. It even wicks sweat away for cooling in summer but retains heat when dry for winter, like the high-end ski suits do."

"Awesome," Dennis said, giving us both a big thumbs-up. "But it's Tinkertech, so what's the maintenance requirement?"

"About as much as containment foam," Chris cut in. "Which means virtually none. Just like the foam actually absorbs impact and shock, which is why they can use it to catch falling or jumping people from upper-story windows and why it can confine even high-end Brutes, the anti-ballistic layer cloth adapts that chemical principle to do the same here. It's a combination of that and the exact micro-structure of the weave, which again is something that doesn't need maintaining as its part of the initial physical setup."

"In fact, its so borderline Tinkertech that right now the PRT's research department is exploring the possibility of mass production methods, if they can work out the last several kinks. Just like containment foam," Miss Militia put in. "If it does pan out, and note that I say if, then hopefully all Protectorate and agent tactical gear can eventually be similarily upgraded for lack of encumbrance while still maintaining protection and flexibility."

"Whoa," Missy said. "You are like the super-Tinker, Taylor!"

"My blushes, Vista!" I said. "I just… most of this was already all out there, I just helped put the pieces together. Which is why Chris and I are such good lab partners, I guess. I figure out what missing pieces could solve the problem, we both find them, he helps me turn all the pieces into a single working design."

"Modular design for the win!" Chris cut in cheekily, still not quite off the high of having actually found his specialization yet. And ugh, that pun was horrible.

" I'm genuinely starting to think your Tinker specialty isn't dual-focus Computers/Combat but Tinker Synergy," Dean said, ignoring the groans at Chris' latest. "And I won't be the only one if you keep doing things like this."

"Moving on," I said, "the next up is the special test item I got approved. Our own Wards dedicated tactical communicator, a separate hardwired channel I'll be installing in all our masks or helmets that's just us-to-us and doesn't go through the PRT comm network."

Dennis instinctively looked at the authority figure in the room before looking back to me. "And you got this sanctioned how?" he asked me wonderingly.

"Because the nature of the test requires it," Miss Militia said, taking it with grace. "These are quantum entanglement communicators."

"Point to point, signal goes straight through the magic of weird physics and not actually crossing the intervening space between," I agreed. "Impossible to decrypt or even perceive except by actually having one of the physical receivers sync'ed to the network already in your hands. It's obviously massive overkill for field radios but if it's perfected the intended usage would be for ultra-secure information transfers between hardened sites. The reason we're getting them is because part of the test is finding out how long the quantum entangled particles will actually stay entangled. And since the math keeps coming back with 'Heck if I know!', a team of beta-testers will carry quantum comms around for the next few months and use them regularly for low priority traffic until they finally break, then we measure how long that took and whether it scaled to amount of message traffic or just elapsed time since construction. And why pay several highly-paid agents to sit around and do that all day when child labor is available at minimum wage?" I snarked.

"More seriously," Miss Militia broke in. "We are not oblivious to the fact that giving you all an effectively impossible-to-monitor communications channel in the field will mean that you will spend a lot of time chatting informally on it. Since measuring things under conditions of frequent use is a part of the test, we're not even entirely against that happening. But at the first incident where your playing around with these turns out to have distracted you from something important, or where you are caught excessively pushing the boundaries of what is or is not acceptable to say on the radio – overhearable or not – then the test stops and if it ever gets run again at all, it will be by dedicated field testers on a proving ground. This is a privilege, not a right, and you will treat it as such."

"Everybody got that?" Carlos said, making firm eye contact with all of us before turning back to her. "Message received, ma'am."

"And last but certainly not least is a one-off, because I am mean and arbitrary and play favorites," I said hammily, to the expected groans. "Missy, we all know that the PR people keep veto'ing your every suggestion to have anything to throw at the bad guys besides your powers and bare hands because they hate having the youngest Ward carry any visible weapons, just like I had to put my stun beams in my forearm mounts instead of being allowed to use an honest zap rifle because teenaged girl with an assault weapon et cetera et cetera," I said.

"You got them to approve for me?!" she said, literally bouncing out of her seat with eagerness.

"No, I just took advantage of the fact that all of their prior written objections based on your branding kept emphasizing the word visible weaponry," I said. "Bureaucracy 101; its not just what you say, its how you say it. And that's why it only takes Miss Militia signing my Tinkertech-sharing permission slip for you to get a new pair of gloves and PR doesn't get a vote," I said, opening the last box to show a pair of gloves almost visibly identical to her the ones already on her costume, and she looked down at them confusedly before looking back up to me.

"These are zap gloves," I said, and smiled back at her sudden eager grin. "Miss Militia will have to show you some new unarmed combat moves for best making use of them, because these go off of palm strikes and grabs, not punches. But the battery pack on the back of the hand here is almost invisible from more than a few feet away, each glove holds at least twenty zaps each before needing recharging, you can plug the adapter into any standard wall outlet like a cell phone charger, and your costume has no visible changes at all. And one good slap from these will shock your opponent just as hard as if you'd run a commercial-issue stun gun into him."

"Best present ever!" she squealed.

"You're also going to need to attend a training module about stun guns, their hazards and health risks, and their proper law enforcement use before you will be allowed to take those in the field," Miss Militia said seriously. "But since these use the same basic principle and voltage as police stun guns, that training will be no trouble to arrange. I'll contact you later with the time."

"Thank you!" Missy said to both of us, before I suddenly got another Missy-hug. For some reason my breakdown over Canberra had broken the first of that ice with her, and now it was actually possible to hug Missy or vice versa on special occasions. Rarely possible, but still possible, where any attempt to do so before would have just pushed her into a wild-animal defensiveness.

God, how horrible is her home that she's that starved for but still that messed up about accepting a simple hug? Do her parents even remember they have a kid or does she just wander occasionally through the house and feed and water herself like an outdoors cat? I still hadn't found anything I could do for her there and I was starting, just starting, to feel the temptation to go just a little Skitter about it. A temptation I was still firmly telling myself was misplaced.

Missy and I broke the hug and Miss Militia let the ongoing celebration continue for a minute or two, then sharply whistled to break in. "And for the bad news, all of you will now start your training on exactly why body armor is not an absolute protection and why you still can't let it substitute for proper situational awareness, cover, and movement." she said in her incoming-badass-everybody-duck voice. "So everybody go get changed into your new protective gear and everyone who doesn't already have a safety-rated helmet as part of their costume go draw one. Because the remainder of this evening is going to be an educational experience that involves the urban combat course, you, me, and a lot of high-velocity rubber bullets."

"I love this job," Missy said with total sincerity, and we all stifled a laugh as we headed to our locker rooms.

Armsmaster's no longer being anywhere involved in my supervisory process had let me take a lot of the brakes off regarding my 'official' Tinkering. I'd even moved my attempts to build an unofficial Tinker-box for myself a few steps back down the immediate priority ladder because now I had an opportunity to work on several other things earlier than I thought I would, such as coming up with borderline-reproducible technology to share with the Protectorate as a whole. Not that improved body armor or secure communicators would by themselves save the world but between that and the QAC they would build up credibility and goodwill, would put me in a position where more people would still hear me when I spoke despite my youth and relative lack of seniority.

There was so much information that I still needed to find a way to share with the Protectorate, with Dragon, with anybody and everybody who needed to hear it. And so many obstacles yet between me and the time when I could dare to. But I was working on those obstacles, one little brick of trust at a time.

Since I actually could work in my basement now with much less fear of an Armsmaster interrupt (even if I still had the house systems set to detect any of the electromagnetic emissions characteristic of his armor or motorcycle within several blocks just in case he decided to go outside regs and try to surveil my work again) that was where I was trying to build something John had read about in a fanfic. A chrono-computing chip that used a micro-wormhole as part of the bus to loop the CPU cycle several microseconds back in time.

In theory the chrono-chip would provide infinite computation because it would complete the first step of a problem, then beam that state back to the beginning of the process, then start the problem again with the first step already precomputed and compute the second step again for the first time, repeat until you reached the final step of the problem – which was sent back to the beginning so that the final answer of the problem, from your perception, was output only one CPU cycle after first entering the problem. While it still wouldn't solve any infinite loops it would near-instantly solve any finite algorithm you entered, no matter how large.

In practice it wasn't working out anywhere near so neatly for me as it had in the story John had read, largely because its entire existence was essentially based on a mathematical paradox. Things would indeterminately glitch out after the first few chrono-loops no matter what I did, because it was instantaneously voiding its own existence at every step. How could the chrono-chip input the second step of the problem if it had never actually solved the first step in this timeline? The answer apparently lay in my incomplete understanding of time travel theory.

And yes, I'd spent several charges on Temporal Physics. The answer I'd gotten back is that trying actual time travel, such as to go back and zap Scion immediately on or before arrival, would almost certainly paradox me right out of existence. There were too many causality-violating operators in Earth's local space already, all of them sending information or energy/mass back in time or distorting local temporal curves. Things ranging from the Path to Victory shard carried by both Contessa and Zion to the Simurgh to Phir Se to the still-slumbering Khonsu. Heck, Clockblocker counted as a mild temporal anomaly himself and I sat next to him every day. I'd need tremendously more experimentation to be able to figure out how to safely compensate any precision temporal engine to still work reliably despite all the local timestream disruption already in progress.

I acknowledged the reminder from the universe that even if my life had been a story once, and fanfic'ed into a whole bunch of neater stories since, that didn't mean I would always benefit from such neat and easy story conveniences. Such as an infinite-computing chip that would let me effortlessly unchain Dragon without risk or other such conveniences.

So I gave up on the chrono-chip project for now and instead decided that if I couldn't sufficiently compensate for localized timestream uncertainty then I could at least make already-existing timestream uncertainty slightly worse, and started adapting my failed chrono-chip research towards the goal of making a localized precognition jammer instead. Because if I could do that then I could actually risk sharing information with people without worrying about them moving beyond the range of my own Blank.

Of course, I didn't have any friendly precogs available right now to test a precog-jammer with. I didn't think Dinah Alcott had even triggered yet, let alone how I'd go about explaining how I knew about her in the first place. So I did the best I could to get the anti-precog-chip as ready as I could with theory calcs alone and left it penciled in for if Dinah ever showed up or after I got sufficient credibility with the PRT to ask for somebody from their Thinker tank to help me test it as a possible anti-Simurgh device.

I'd also just about finished the schematics for a wide-area surveillance blackbox intended to be distributed across as many PRT operations as would have the budget to mount one on their roofs or vehicles. It had been sold as an ultra-low-frequency scanner tuned to specific wavelength ranges and signal characteristics almost never found in conventional use but that had been characteristic of Sphere's gear, along with hypothetical extrapolations to what Mannequin's might radiate. Burnscar could turn her flames off, Shatterbird could keep her mouth shut, and the rest of the Nine didn't have anything unique to them that would show up on a long-range sensor, but Mannequin needed his Tinkertech operating at all times just to stay alive, let alone mobile.

And that meant if you could build a scanner that could lock into him at range, you could find and track the Slaughterhouse Nine. A valid contribution towards helping put those murderhobos into a corner they couldn't get out of, even with all the excuses Cauldron would make for them. They could hardly openly order the Protectorate to go hands-off if the S9 were caught in the open and on the road, after all.

But the reason the blackboxes were so heavily blackboxed wasn't just hiding my abilities as an Everything Mass-Producible Non-Shard-Limited Tinker, although given all the 'lucky' sharing I'd done to date it certainly didn't hurt. No, that was to keep anybody from realizing that the exotic Tinkertech scanning technology in the boxes wasn't just looking for the Tinkertech of the S9.

Scion. He was the primary target and I knew far too little about him. And, of course, his movements across the world were erratic and untrackable. I was still working on a way to get suitable sensor packages in range of the only occasions where his showing up was even semi-reliably predictable, i.e., Endbringer fights, but that didn't mean I'd bet all my nickels on one horse. If the long-range tracking network I was hoping to get the PRT to set up for the Slaughterhouse Nine also just happened to catch a Scion sighting as he randomly zipped into and out of North America… well, it might take weeks or months but I'd finally get a valid dimensional scanner reading of him. Finally know more about what I was up against.

Still, even with all the bumps in the road and all the plans I had to keep juggling – and more slowly than before because my friends were still making sure I got all my sleeps in as demanded, darn them - as we closed out March and headed into April I could at least be satisfied that this month had been still more productive for me than the month before that. And that I had every intention of, and at the moment what looked like every prospect of, keeping that pattern going until the job was finally done.

"So you're saying that this girl is being neglected? Why isn't anyone doing anything about it?" Dad asked me one evening at home while we were both couching it in the living room.

I didn't often bring superhero concerns home to my dad because outside of emotional support, there's not much advice he'd know how to give me there. But having been consistently stumped myself on the Missy Biron question I'd decided to see if talking it over with a fresh perspective would at least shake loose any ideas. And while you normally couldn't unmask another Ward to your parents without their parents' permission, one of the few bureaucratic paradoxes of all the bullshit that Vista's parents had finessed the Youth Guard into winding around her case had meant they'd limited their ability to veto Wards decisions in the same way they'd tied the PRT's hands regarding decisions about Missy's home life. So if Vista herself agreed and I could talk Miss Militia into letting Missy come over to my house for out-of-costume friendship then that's all it took.

She wasn't here at our house now, of course. Like I'd said, you never discussed Vista's home life within her hearing if you could possibly help it.

"Because officially the PRT can't," I explained. "Her parents pulled a big crocodile tears on family court and the Youth Guard, all about how they were sooooo afraid the PRT would take their child away at the slightest excuse and use her like a child soldier because she's the most powerful Ward like maybe ever. So they got a binding injunction from the court that only Youth Guard gets to vet her situation and do her home welfare checks, not the PRT at all."

"And her parents are abusing her?" he said heatedly.

"Neglecting her," I said. "Nobody ever slaps her or shoves her in a closet or things like that. If anyone had then the Youth Guard be damned, the Brockton Bay Wards would have gone medieval on their a- butts." I cut myself off. "The problem is that her parents are on like year whatever of the world's messiest divorce without ever actually getting around to having the divorce. So she only gets paid any real attention to by either of them when its them trying to use her as a weapon to undercut the other one, and spends the rest of her time at home in her bedroom listening to adults have domestic arguments loud enough to be heard two rooms away."

"How has she not… broken down yet?" he asked me flabbergastedly.

"She has the Wards to escape into," I said. "It's basically this whole other life to her. It is pretty much her whole life. And yeah, its still not healthy for a girl her age to think of herself as 'Vista' first and 'Missy Biron' second, but it's a lot less unhealthy then if she'd had to live in that full-time."

"That's not a stable full-time situation," my father said.

"We know," I agreed. "The entire team except for Missy have been beating our heads on this forever. The Protectorate can't do anything, the PRT can't do anything, the Youth Guard won't do anything because for God only knows what reason they're all pulling a Blackwell so hard that they make Winslow look as sharp as, bleh, the US Naval Academy or something-"

"And you were hoping I could do something?" My dad said.

"Or at least think of something." I sighed, "because we sure haven't." And then was shocked at the sight of my dad actually smiling.

"Taylor, what happens if her parents ever finalize that divorce?" he asked me.

"I- they'd both have to get their custody applications evaluated by the court again as part of the divorce settlement, and presuming the judge wasn't a senile idiot this time they'd both fail, especially with the potentially available character witnesses. So that kicks her custody decisions back to the PRT no matter what Youth Guard whines and bitches about. But as mega-estranged as they are her parents don't actually want to get legally divorced, because the particular way their wealth is structured means they'd both lose the big fancy house in the process selling it for court costs."

"But they still legitimately hate each other and wish they could divorce," my Dad said.

"Yes, but how does that help us?"

"What would happen if an experienced divorce lawyer approached either of them, and said that he'd thought of a way he could get the house all wrapped up for them – cutting out the other one entirely – if only they'd hire him and authorize him to actually start formal proceedings?"

I jawdropped at the sheer simple brilliance of it. "They'd jump on it like a starving shark!" I said, before my lips started to involuntarily curl up into a shark-like grin of my own. "Of course, neither of us happens to be an experienced divorce lawyer."

"No, but we happen to know one," my dad said, matching my grin. "And we know that he's recently learned a huge lesson about not letting young girls stay in horrible situations where neither of their parents can see that they need help."

I stepped across and gave my dad a big hug. "Y'know, dad, sometimes you're kinda a genius."

"Sometimes," he agreed wistfully, and I stood up and separated. "So, should I call Alan tomorrow?" he asked.

"No, let me run this past the person who'd actually be affected the most and get her agreement first," I said. "As well as her, and the rest of the team's, advice on whether her mom or her dad would make the best sucker to approach."

"Well, if it's any consolation Alan probably will get them the house," my dad said. "For all the good it will do them, after they have nobody to actually live in it with."

"There's a lesson there for us all, I think." I said, and we sat down on the couch next to each other and started to watch the TV again.

"Dad?" I said after a long pause. "I'm glad you're back."

"Me too, baby girl. Me too."

Author's Note: The gathering storm can wait a little longer to gather, because I still got shit to get through.

But yes, we finally have a breakthrough on the Vista front, Danny Hebert finally gets to be a big damn hero, Taylor starts sharing her Tinkertech, and we even see some long-range plans vs. S-class threats and Scion.

And yes, the chrono-chip is from the oft-mentioned Inspired Inventor fanfic "Technology Will Win The Day"... and I deliberately had it not work in my universe because if it did, choo choo motherfuckers, we're on the way to dead Zion in a month. But at least I explained why it didn't work and used that explanation to further the plot elsewhere.

And before anybody tells me temporal physics doesn't work that way I would like to quote fiction's greatest authority on temporal physics...

Wibbley. Wobbley. Timey. Wimey. Stuff.

There you go. :)

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

Check out my (on hiatus) Worm fanfic, A Ghost of a Chance!

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cliffc999

Jul 22, 2019

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Threadmarks Interlude 3-D: Clockblocker New

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cliffc999

Jul 23, 2019

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Interlude 3-D: Clockblocker

I still didn't quite know what to make of Taylor Hebert.

Oh, I'd entirely come around to believing that she was being entirely sincere about wanting to be a hero, entirely genuine about wanting to be friends with us, and 200% not fake about caring about people and just being an all-around decent person. She'd not only told me the truth in our little heart-to-heart but we'd all seen her breakdown when the news about the Simurgh attack had come in. No one was that good an actress. I don't think even Ingenue could have pulled that one off and she was supposed to have had an actual parahuman power for remaking herself into exactly whatever she wished people to see her as. At that moment Taylor had looked like a girl who was being punched directly in the soul. Punched like Alexandria could punch, or maybe even Scion.

What I couldn't quite figure out was why. Why did Taylor feel so strongly that it was somehow her personal responsibility for fixing everything that was wrong with the world? The only other person I'd ever seen torture herself like that was Panacea and her own guilt complex about every sick or injured person she couldn't reach in time to heal. I entirely understood why those two girls had so quickly become each other's best friend. They were both carrying the same kind of self-imposed burden, and they could understand each other right down to each other's shoe tops without even needing words. But if I'd always thought Amy was a little confusing because I couldn't entirely figure out why she loaded herself down like that, then that was nothing compared to the confusion that Taylor gave me.

It's not as if the team was unused to seeing workaholics, or seeing people who threw themselves so deeply into the job because they were trying hard to escape something else. Missy had been doing that since before most of us had even joined the team. And Missy's situation had me thinking that maybe part of the reason Taylor felt so responsible for fixing everything was because she was legitimately good at fixing things. Missy's screwed up life had been frustrating the entire team and most of the adults for years but Taylor had needed less than a month to figure out the right adult to ask, and because she knew someone who knew someone Missy's horrible parents were now walking themselves straight into a legal ambush that would in just a couple months be in prime position to get Missy out of that horrible life. So I could get that the girl who'd apparently always been the girl who helped fix things for other people, apparently even before she'd triggered, would start believing that she had to fix things around her. That if it was staying broken, it was her fault for ignoring it. But that didn't explain the whole thing.

Regarding Missy, even though the plan had yet to actually hit the courts yet the arguments had already started quietly between us over whose family would get to foster Missy if/when that whole thing finally worked out. Her own request for Taylor's house was being nixed due to Taylor's parent being a single dad who already worked long hours and so Family Services probably wouldn't agree to putting another child there. I was pretty sure that when the dust finally settled she'd become my little sister because sending Missy to Dean's family would be more of the same social climbing and 'using kids as showpieces' crap that she was trying to escape, and my family was the next best set up for assimilating a foster kid after Dean's by the standards that Family Services would be bean counting.

Not that Dean's parents were nearly as bad as the Birons, because abandoning your child to be raised by wolves would still get you a more human upbringing than the Birons. The Stansfields still weren't any prizes, though. Also, there was that whole awkward crush thing she'd had on Dean for a long while, but its interesting how fast that started to go away once Missy saw an actual, real escape from the box she'd been stuck in. I could speak from painful experience that human emotions did weird things to distract yourself with when you were stuck in prolonged stress that you had no outlet for and no power to affect. And it's certainly not as if I had even the slightest objection to the idea of my family fostering Missy. You had to have something really wrong with you to not like or at least deeply sympathize with Missy and she'd already been connecting with me as her sort-of big brother for a while, before she had Taylor to slide into as her sort-of big sister alongside me.

Still, for all that being around Taylor was steadily improving the lives of everyone else – Missy's, Chris's and his finally finding his specialization, the team getting new gear and tactical options, Armsmaster being replaced by Miss Militia as our supervisory agent (even if Taylor hadn't even intended for that one to happen), and all the rest – its like nothing ever really improved her life for her. It had taken a full team intervention spearheaded by Panacea and Miss Militia putting Taylor on an officially supervised sleep log to finally get Taylor to throttle back her habit of working herself half to death to merely working herself like Missy, and she still didn't seem to have any hobbies that didn't involve socializing with people she already knew.

Now, it's not like Taylor was exactly breaking down under her load. Outside of that one not-sleeping thing she was generally very good at knowing her own strengths and how far her endurance could carry her before she had to manage her time. But that was the thing. She was managing her time, however much she tried to make it look casual, and she was parceling it out with almost obsessive precision. Even her non-working time was 'I need this much time to keep from having a breakdown, and that much to be a genuine friend to the people I care about and not a fake one, and then this much time to help other people with these things', and you could almost hear the invisible stopwatch ticking in her head as she spent as much time away from her projects as she thought she was allowed to but not a minute more.

Taylor's 'Invictus mode' had originally made her very hard for Dean to read, but once she'd agreed to mostly stop using it except for emergencies that let him start picking up things, and he soon got enough experience with her to learn to mostly compensate. So I'd asked him if he wouldn't mind talking about what he'd seen about Taylor. Just in case there was something wrong we could help with, because I was really afraid there was. And he finally agreed to tell me and Carlos about it, and sure enough, something was eating her.

Taylor was afraid of something. Desperately afraid. Every waking minute of every day, there was some horrible thought always at the back of her mind that she was constantly keeping away from her face, from her voice, even from herself a lot of the time. The reason I'd said she was 'mostly' keeping her promise to us about Invictus mode is because I was pretty sure that she was constantly using at least a little of it to keep anybody else from noticing that something was riding her this hard.

Since we were 100% certain that asking Taylor about it would just cause her to clam up and probably withdraw even further into her shell, which was the absolute last thing we wanted, we didn't. But all of the Wards had checked as much of Taylor's life as we could without getting caught at it to see if what she was afraid of had been some other person, someone like Sophia or those two other girls that hadn't been caught and that she was still terrified would find some way to get at her. We'd checked her father, even, in case that was it. And Vicky and Amy had gone through Arcadia as best as they could to see if it had been anyone there. And we knew it wasn't Armsmaster because Dean had said Taylor's fears hadn't changed even a little bit after he'd been relieved, and that it wasn't anybody else in the building because we hadn't seen anyone in the building not like Taylor and even Director Piggot liked her. And she didn't like anyone. But no matter how we checked we didn't find anyone who was threatening her or oppressing her enough to explain what Dean had been picking up.

If it wasn't for the fact that Amy had full-healed Taylor twice and still kept giving her diagnostic pokes every now and then at Arcadia to make sure Taylor was keeping up with her promise to stop skipping sleep, I'd honestly have wondered if Taylor had been dying from a terminal illness. I knew a lot about that too, from having watched my dad before he finally went into remission. About the way you started looking at the world when you knew that you only had so much time left. The way you started rushing to try and cram in everything you'd left undone, all the things you hadn't said or taken care of, while you still thought you'd be able to. Taylor had that look in her eyes every day. You had to look really close to see it, and you still couldn't unless you were that familiar with it like I was, but she had it.

Taylor Hebert was one of the most decent people I'd ever met, but apparently that still wasn't enough for the world to just let her be happy. And you learned a lot about not seeing happy endings when you lived in Brockton Bay, but that didn't mean you ever got to like it. I just wished that one day, Taylor would be able to actually tell us about who or what she was so afraid of. That she'd do it in time before it finally caught up to her and we'd be too late to help.

Because of course we'd help her with it, whatever it was. We were the Brockton Bay Wards, and that's what we did.

Author's Note: You know, it occurred to me that I haven't actually done a POV yet where we see how the Wards perceive Taylor, so while I'm still wrestling with the outline you get an interlude that has Clockblocker being philosophical.

And yeah, those kids are sharper than anyone gives them credit for. As for Invictus or Blank not blocking Dean out, remember, Taylor doesn't always use Invictus... and Dean isn't hostile to her, so Blank lets him in just fine.

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

Check out my (on hiatus) Worm fanfic, A Ghost of a Chance!

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Threadmarks Interlude 3-E: Tagg New

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Jul 24, 2019

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Interlude 3-E: Tagg

Spoiler: Cue the music!

"Where is the drone, move your asses!" I roared into my helmet radio as the remnants of my headquarters element fell in around me and we set up a hasty perimeter at the end of an abandoned row of houses in what had once been a suburban district of Madison. The distant roars and explosions were available at the moment to tell me that Crawler was still being kept pinned down by the helicopters over a mile away, so at least that part of the plan was working. But we were going to need some eyes in the sky to be able to track down and kill Jack Slash and his stragglers in this damned maze, so at the very least one of the Predators would have to be retasked here.

No battle plan ever survived contact with the enemy but this one in particular had gone sideways very shortly after initial engagement. Not that I'd had much time to plan, given that even the new early-warning tech some Tinker had come up with had barely given us fifteen minutes' to prepare for the arrival of the Slaughterhouse Nine at the Madison Containment Zone. To be honest, we hadn't even known for certain if they were going to attack the Zone or merely bypass it. The easternmost edge of the CZ proper was still over two miles west from the intersection of Interstates 39 and 94, and despite the potential weakness to my perimeter neither highway had been closed to normal traffic. So the incoming signal denoting the presence of Mannequin's particular technology could have meant that the Nine were simply driving by and had no intentions of stopping here.

Not that that had stopped my decision for a moment. The Slaughterhouse Nine were a seeping, gangrenous wound on the ass of the universe and every day that they'd been allowed to continue breathing had been a separate crime against humanity. Between their cowardly habit of running away from even the possibility of any fight they couldn't win and the sheer size of the continent, they had gotten away with their sick games for years. But the new tech meant that their ability to lay low was coming to an end and even though it had hardly gotten into distribution yet, by a miraculous stroke of good fortune the fact that high-threat zones such as the Madison CZ had been slated for the first wave of the black boxes meant that we'd already gotten a hit on the tracking network this early.

And better yet, we'd gotten the hit in one of the best possible places for an engagement against the Nine. For the job of holding down the Simurgh's hellish little playground I had almost a full brigade of PRT Containment Zone troopers and US Army augmentations assigned to my command, with integrated aviation assets. I had one of the largest concentrations of force available to any PRT Regional Director in North America right under my thumb. I even had Foothold available, the only Regional Director with that kind of authority or any need for it.

And I was also the only PRT Regional Director who had no non-combatants within their area of responsibility. The population of the Containment Zone had been innocent civilians at one time, and in the privacy of my thoughts I still allowed myself the luxury of mourning their fates. But my duty was clear and every one of them was now a Simurgh bomb, a human terror weapon like the thousands and thousands that had helped rip the bleeding heart out of Northern Europe after Lausanne. I'd had to shoot them myself and counsel my men again and again after their having done likewise, over and over again, as the poor bastards had made their frantic and futile runs at the wire. So if the inhabitants of the CZ died today as collateral damage from a full-scale battle with the Slaughterhouse Nine, then that would actually be more merciful a fate than what they'd already been sentenced to. Quicker and kinder than their having to remain in that hopeless cage for decades as walking dead men until they finally were allowed to stop walking.

Which is why that as soon as I'd been woken up and informed that the Slaughterhouse Nine were entering my area of responsibility I'd mobilized all my forces and drawn up the best attack plan I could in the time I'd had. As much as I knew that we were going to bleed and bleed hard vs. that gang of homicidal freaks, the fact remained that these were near-ideal conditions to engage them in. The local balance of force was heavily in our favor, and outside of traffic on the Interstate itself there was literally nothing and no one around for them to use as collateral damage. Traffic that was itself almost nonexistent due to the the hour. It would only be us, them, and the already-condemned audience in the nearby CZ. The PRT would simply never get another chance as good as this.

So risks or not I'd immediately messaged Washington, informed them I was engaging the S9 immediately and on my own authority regardless of whether or not they thought it was a safe idea or not, then demanded the heaviest cape reinforcements that they could get here as fast as possible. And then we rolled out and hit the bastards with everything we had without even waiting for the reinforcements, to make goddamn sure the Nine couldn't pull another one of their slithering escapes before the hammer could finally arrive.

I wasn't a fool. I knew that the Nine had options that couldn't simply be solved with bullets. The unstoppable Siberian. The anti-technological weapon of mass destruction that was Shatterbird. And possibly the worst of them all, that demon child Bonesaw. But even if myself and all my men died as well should the potential threat of Bonesaw's last-ditch contingencies prove to be actual, or should the Nine inflict enough casualties on my forces to remove our ability to keep the Containment Zone lines sealed, then I could and would still order Foothold. The risk of that particular death or any other was the duty we had already sworn ourselves to. The potential fate that we had each been warned of, had each individually accepted and volunteered for.

But nobody ever won any battles by dying for their flag. They won by making the other son-of-a-bitch die for his. And despite all the hits we'd taken we weren't dead yet.

"Bold One, Overlord!" I heard the voice of my chief of staff in my head, using the call sign for the central command center. When we'd deployed for the initial attack I'd gone forward with my field headquarters element to assume immediate tactical control of the operation and left him back in the situation room with all the radios and monitors to coordinate the big picture. "Bold One, respond!"

"Not dead yet, Overlord!" I shouted back. "Status on the heavy hitters?"

"Protectorate says no-go on teleporter availability. They can't get here in time. Should I commit our local cape reserve?"

"No," I shot back. "With all the troops that we pulled off the line for this, we need those force multipliers still on the Wall! Besides, just capes by themselves have been swinging and missing on these bastards for years. We still need the capes to swing in and finish off the hard nuts, but we'll whittle 'em down as much as we can ourselves before-"

And then a scream of terror from the perimeter made me look up. "Contact right, contact right!" my sentries shouted immediately before I heard everybody assigned to watch that particular area of responsibility opening fire. The heightened durability that this particular target possessed meant that even the battle rifles and anti-vehicle rifles I'd had issued to all squad-designated marksmen weren't slowing him down, but then one of my quicker-thinking riflemen immediately escalated to his underbarrel 40mm grenade launcher. He scored a direct hit just before the Brute's charge would have brought him within the grenade's minimum arming distance, and given that the shaped-charge anti-vehicle grenade would have lanced a hole in one side of an APC and out the other it was more than sufficient to blow the misshapen freak in half.

I thanked God that it hadn't been the Siberian.

"Good shooting, soldier!" I called to him, and turned back to the radio. "Overlord, Hatchet Face is down, I say again, Hatchet Face is down." I looked up again and barked an order. "Somebody shove a white phosphorous down what's left of his throat and pull the pin! We don't need to find out if he regenerates too."

"Dumbass forgot that we didn't have any powers to neutralize," I heard a nearby sergeant mutter under his breath, and I couldn't help but grin to myself at that remark as I got back to concentrating on the overall tactical situation.

We'd made first contact with the Slaughterhouse Nine shortly before dawn, as they'd been heading south on I-39. At that time of day there was virtually zero traffic, so when the signal tracker had positively located them all riding in a Winnebago said RV had been fortuitously alone on the road with only one nondescript van following it from over a mile behind. I had multiple Predator drones assigned to the CZ for continuing ongoing aerial observation of Madison, and I'd ordered one of the armed Reaper variants to be retasked for the first strike.

So the earliest warning the Slaughterhouse Nine had that they were under attack was when a Hellfire missile dropped right through the roof of their RV and cratered it all over the road. Killing Shatterbird with the first shot had been an essential part of the mission, because if she'd still been up when the main engagement started then we would have been desperately on the back foot.

Her failure to emerge from the wreckage, as well as Mannequin's, meant that they'd almost certainly died. But the first kink in the plan had occurred when we hadn't been as lucky with Bonesaw. The pint-sized horror must have been riding in the Siberian's lap or something because they immediately emerged from the wreckage entirely unscathed, the Siberian having the ability to share her invincibility with anyone she was touching. Hatchet Face and Crawler were likewise still in the fight, being the Brutes. Jack Slash had been down but apparently whatever augments Bonesaw had been evaluated as having provided the Nine's 'squishier' members had kept him barely alive through the attack, him being further away from the point of impact than Shatterbird and Mannequin had been. By the time the follow-up Hellfire arrived the Siberian had already reached him and started to carry both him and Bonesaw off to safety off the side of the road, in the nearby abandoned suburbs.

I ordered the Reaper to expend all its remaining missiles on Crawler to keep him pinned down and busy regenerating instead of being free to move around and disrupt our lines, then committed the gunships to back that up when the drone would run out. The bulk of my ground troops were mechanized infantry and light armored cav, so I sent them in to start a search of the housing development that the remainder had fled into. With the Siberian in play I couldn't dare to have anyone dismount and search on foot, but if she wanted to be the cat then I'd give her some volunteer mice to chase in the form of several of my Humvees going at full throttle. Poor brave souls.

I'd set up a mousetrap for Burnscar by having a hand-picked detachment of men light a bonfire in a preprepared area shortly before the missile attack. Sure enough, she'd used her power to survive the Hellfire by teleporting out from the middle of the blast to the nearest large fire she could sense. A pair of my best snipers with .50-cal anti-vehicle rifles had already been dialed in on her arrival point and that took care of that.

The command-and-control helicopter up in the sky lost track of the survivors of the Nine when Jack apparently received enough medical attention from Bonesaw to recover sufficiently to knock it out of the sky with his powers, and two of the gunships followed it before the rest could withdraw. We hadn't been certain if his line-of-sight cutting trick worked even against targets at that altitude, but now we had our answer. However, one of their last reports had been that they no longer had eyes on the Siberian at all. Apparently she'd separated from the main group entirely. The distinct possibility that Jack had ordered her to make a run straight for the Wall and try to draw us off by forcing a breach there was one of the reasons I'd refused to move my own cape support forward.

Still, with the Siberian apparently no longer in play here we could now turn this into an infantry battle. Being the closest to that position I'd taken in the nearest available ground troops myself to flood the entire zone around where Jack and his remnants had gone to ground amidst the empty suburban row houses and strip malls and we'd started our house-to-house search. Even with the nagging fear that we were already breathing some kind of hell-plague dogging our every steps, or that we might be charging straight into the Siberian's trap, we still went in boot to boot without a moment's hesitation. I've never been prouder of my men. Each and every one of them.

So we slowly and methodically ran them to ground. Hatchet Face had just tried and failed to suicide charge us, nobody had reported any contact with the Siberian anywhere since she'd dropped out of sight, Crawler was still being largely penned in by the continuous rain of fire that my aviation and armor assets kept blowing him into pieces with over and over again as backed up by one of our more powerful Shakers that I'd authorized release from the Wall when we started running low on ammo, and-

"Predator Two on station and tracking, Bold One," Overlord reported. "We have all eyes up and running."

"Thank God," I replied "Overlord, push this out on the general band. Everybody light their IR blinkers, I say again, everybody turn on their blinkers. Let the drone see where we all are, and whatever's left has to be Jack and Bonesaw."

I heard the orders go out, and less than two minutes later we got the hit. Or rather, hits. Subtracting the ones that were almost certainly animals there was one unaccounted-for IR spot up at the borders of the reservoir, and one less than two blocks from me hiding in an empty house.

"The one by the water is likely Bonesaw," I said. "Can you get a precise enough sighting for a drone strike?"

"We can confirm its Bonesaw, sir." Overlord replied. "She's standing right out in the open. But the drone doesn't carry any incendiaries powerful enough to guarantee destruction of biological agents," Overlord reminded me. "Neither do the gunships, for that matter. We'd need a fuel-air explosive to guarantee that and even if the Air Force scrambled one right now it wouldn't be here for at least an hour. Do you think she's already released her contingencies yet?"

"Dammit," I swore. "Hold fire for now. There's only one man who can tell us if her threat is potential or actual at this point," I said grimly, turning to my troops. "Everybody, saddle up! We're investing that house two blocks west of here… and then I have to talk to the world's biggest asshole."

It didn't take us very long at all to get there and have a platoon of my men surround the house, and I got out the megaphone.

"Jack Slash, this is Director Tagg of the PRT Madison Containment Zone. Surrender immediately and order all your people to do likewise, and I'll let you live long enough to see if my chain of command decides whether to still enforce your Kill Orders or just give you the Birdcage. As opposed to my deciding right now."

"That's not exactly what I'd call a proper negotiation, now is it General Tagg?" I heard his smirking voice coming from within the house.

"It's the only deal you're going to get, Jack." I said firmly. "It's the only one I'd be willing to give. To be honest I've always believed that death is preferable to the Birdcage… but for you, I could make an exception."

"Do you know what happens if I tell my little Riley to do what she loves to do so much?" the psychopath retorted. I shook my head. Jack Slash had been consistently reported to be one of the most insidious mind-fuckers that ever lived, but so far I hadn't heard a damn thing from him that a blind man couldn't have predicted coming a mile away.

"So she hasn't done it yet?"

"One does have to reserve one's hole card for the final hand, after all."

Asshole. "Jack, they didn't make me a general because I was stupid enough to spend my time worrying about what the enemy might be going to do instead of doing my job. Which job is making the enemy worry about what I might be going to do. So let me ask you your own question – do you know happens if you tell Bonesaw to release her bio-weapons?"

"I was imagining that you would all die, along with millions of other people," he replied petulantly. "I know that the dullness of the military mind is legendary, but please don't tell me you didn't at least get that far."

And at that point I couldn't help but laugh, honest-to-God laugh, at how much this prancing prissy psychopath just couldn't see where he was really standing. "Jack, you stupid two-bit alley mugger," I said. "Do you not have the faintest clue where you are? Did you not even think about what being here means?"

"Now you listen to me-" Jack Slash tried to interrupt desperately, and I talked right over him.

"This is a Simurgh Containment Zone, you miserable ass-clown! You do remember her, right? The worst of the Endbringers? The one who uses mind-warping and Tinkertech to turn innocent people into walking bombs? And you're threatening me with one person of mass destruction? I have what could be several hundred thousand of those not three miles away from here behind a wall, and I've had to stare at them every day for years! What sort of contingency plans do you think I have, Jack? What sort I've needed to have?" I snorted. "You honestly believe that you're my worst nightmare? You're not even an unpleasant daydream."

"I doubt-" Jack Slash said as he showed himself in the door at last and as I saw fear, actual fear in the face of the heretofore untouchable monster I couldn't help but grin.

"It's called Foothold, Jack." I said. "It's there in case some unknown Tinkertech leaps out from the center of town, or if that damned wormhole she tore to Earth-Aleph goes uncontrollable, if it turns out the Simurgh already decided to escalate to Tinkertech-augmented biological warfare and was just waiting for a couple of years to tell us, or anything else that might take it all the way to Doomsday. They gave me special weapons release, you murderous monkey."

Jack Slash's face turned pale in outright horror. "No. You wouldn't-"

"I say three words into my headset right now, or the men in my headquarters hear you kill me before I can finish saying them, and yes, we do all die. Me, my men, and you. And not from Bonesaw's germs but from the multiple atomic demolitions charges already buried and waiting all around the zone. Everything within five miles of the Wall turns to pure white light and gone. Point of order: We're actually less than three miles away."

I was admittedly exaggerating a bit. Foothold wasn't quite that extreme. But the fact did remain that in the event of an ultimate emergency either myself or Overlord could call down a nuclear strike on this town at any time, without even needing National Command Authority to concur as they had already pre-authorized us. And if we did that then even Bonesaw's plagues wouldn't kill anyone who wasn't already dying anyway.

"So what's it going to be, Jack? The Birdcage or the afterlife?"

"I-I'm calling your bluff! I'll tell her to do it, see if I won-"

And then a brilliant blue flash of light in the sky broke our deadlock, as both Jack and I looked up to see the arrival of one of the few capes in North America who could make it here in time via his own Mover abilities even with whatever snarl had kept the Protectorate's teleporters from rushing us heavy cape reinforcements. The biggest of the big guns himself was now on station, and that meant it was all over but the shooting.

"Legend, sterilize Bonesaw immediately!" I yelled into my mike with frantic haste, as I saw Legend drop from the sky already heading towards her position even as I called. Overlord must have been in contact with him already on the way in and given him the targeting coordinates even before I could, because Bonesaw and everything within several hundred meters of her rapidly vanished in an energy barrage intense enough to destroy anything she might have released at the last second, right on down to prions.

I motioned to one of the men adjacent to me to hand me his rifle, and I turned back to Jack.

"… if it's all the same to you, I think I'll take that deal now." Jack Slash said, with a pathetic caricature of a smile on his face.

"Fuck you," I answered him, and taking inspiration from my quick-thinking rifleman earlier I fired the M203 grenade launcher combo I'd borrowed and turned Jack Slash into pink mist.

Legend arrived, lit by the rising sun, less than a minute after Jack Slash had departed this Earth, and I turned to greet him. "Thanks for saving our asses," I nodded to him. "If Jack had pushed it one step further I wouldn't have had any option left except Foothold."

"I'm very glad we didn't need it," Legend replied. "Is that all of them?"

"We've stepped on the bodies for Jack Slash, Mannequin, Burnscar, Shatterbird, Hatchet Face, and now Bonesaw," I replied. "The Siberian fell completely off the map about five-ten minutes after first contact and has apparently done a runner. I don't know why. To be honest, I don't really care at this point."

"We'll do our best to run her down for you," Legend replied, before he shook his head and whistled softly. "I can't believe it's finally over," he said. "After so long-"

"I know what you mean."

"What were your casualties?"

"Not as bad as they could have been. Not as low as I'd have wished for. Preliminary estimates are at least fifty men from the helicopter crews and the mechanized cav. Oh, and we're keeping Crawler mostly contained but we'll still need you to finish him off before you leave."

"I can certainly do that," Legend agreed. "What's the status on your NBC people?"

"Preliminary reports from the burn site are nothing on the detectors, sir." Overlord replied for us in our radios. "Not even the Tinkertech ones we'd had available in case of possible Simurgh bioweapons. Whatever Bonesaw had, all indicators are that it died with her." Everybody, including Legend and me, slumped in relief at that one.

"So, who gets the thank-you card?" I asked Legend. "Dragon? Armsmaster? Those new black boxes made all the difference. Without them Jack would have slid right past us unnoticed like he did for everyone else, and we'd never have had this chance."

"A young new Tinker in Brockton Bay, actually," Legend replied. "She's called Binary, and she joined the Wards only a couple of months ago."

"And she's already pulling things like this off?" I said, legitimately impressed. "You do your best to hang on to that young lady, you hear me? In the Army she'd have been what we'd call a fast-tracker."

"Oh, we intend to," he agreed, grinning. "And I'll certainly give her your congratulations alongside of my own."

"Thanks," I said, before a thought occurred to me. "The bounty on the Nine, or at least the ones we got. I know we can't collect it as PRT or Protectorate employees, but would it be possible to donate it to the Madison Memorial Fund?" I said, sighing. "It'd be something, at least."

"I think that would be entirely appropriate," Legend agreed. "And to you and to all your people – well done."

(The post Thoughts on Tagg and the Battle of Madison has been provided as useful background information for this chapter.)

Author's Note: As I said in my prior post, I'm still busy trying to get a coherent, evenly-paced timeline out of everything I have scheduled and everything I'd like to schedule to have happen in Brockton Bay. But that doesn't mean that some of the things taking place outside of Brockton Bay can't be pencilled in, and so by viewer request we have a full-length treatment and not just a background mention of the death of the Slaughterhouse Nine.

I honestly didn't know what their exact membership was in April 2011 so I just used the ones I was familiar with. Likewise, I'm not sure of the exact amount of damage it takes to keep Crawler busy staying mostly penned in so I just assumed 'a lot' and threw that at him. Yes, it did very much look like a scene from 'the troops keep him pinned down early on' from a Hulk movie, only with less Hulk escalating to where he could just crash out.

To clarify what would not be known to the POV characters and thus not mentionable in the story, that second van was indeed Manton and he did indeed go "Fuck this shit, I'm out." That's why the Siberian fades out after the initial engagement. Manton is thoroughly aware of just how thorough and how relentless the Containment Zone troopers can be when they are rolling hot and so he got lost while the getting was still possible.

And yes, I actually gave Tagg some props. I mean, he's honestly not one of my favorite characters and he horribly fucked up in Brockton Bay, but I decided that if he was given a mission he actually knew how to handle he'd do it well. And hell, pretty much anybody deserves better in his life than just shooting helpless Ziz-bombs as they hung on the wire. So now he gets at least one good's night sleep in his career.

I also don't see Tagg as quite as bad as MCU General Ross because Ross is the platonic ideal of fucked up. I do, however, see both men as played by the same actor, hence the homage to the classic Ross line in the opener.

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

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cliffc999

Jul 25, 2019

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Evolution 3.6

"We interrupt this program now for a Special Announcement from the Protectorate." I heard the voice of the network announcer said unexpectedly, after the comforting background noise of late Saturday morning cartoons had suddenly cut out. It was one of the rare Saturdays where I'd had nothing official scheduled – no Wards training, no PSAs, no console duty or patrols – and so I'd blocked out the morning to catch up on some software projects before meeting Amy for lunch and an afternoon hanging out on the Boardwalk. My loaning Amy that official Wards "Why Proper Rest Is A Medical Necessity" literature to show her mother had apparently done some good, because now Carol Dallon was at least giving her permission to take one day off a week-

I looked up from my computer monitor to focus my full attention on the basement TV as the view switched to a shot of Legend himself at the podium of the press room at the Protectorate's NYC headquarters. My blood chilled as I tried to imagine what this could mean. Another unexpected Endbringer attack? No, there weren't any sirens and Legend would already be heading to the scene. A new S-class threat? Please, God, not another-

And then all my alarmed speculations ground to a confused halt as I realized that Legend was not just smiling, but acting like a man trying very hard to restrain himself from expressing a vastly inappropriate amount of schaudenfreude in public. Like something unspeakably awful had just happened, except that it had happened to people he'd intensely loathed. But Legend was one of the few genuine good guys. He didn't walk around carrying grudges like that-

"Ladies and gentlemen of the press, this morning it is my pleasure to give you one of the most unexpected and yet entirely welcome announcements of my career. I am proud and privileged to report that at approximately 7am Eastern time this morning the brave men and women assigned to duty in the Madison Containment Zone, under the leadership of Director James Tagg, were able to successfully enforce the outstanding Kill Orders on the majority of the Slaughterhouse Nine."

What?

My own amazement was matched by the astonished gasp and near-instant babble of questions by every reporter in the room, and Legend waved for silence repeatedly before finally getting enough of it to continue.

"We can confirm, and I emphasize confirm, the deaths of Jack Slash-"

I slumped back in my seat in absolute shock at the realization that Golden Morning had just been delayed at least fifteen years. I'd barely allowed myself any hope for this to happen at all, let alone so soon-

"-Shatterbird, Mannequin, Burnscar, Hatchet Face-"

Holy- did they clean sweep? Just killing Jack alone would have been a minor miracle, but it sounds like the PRT curbstomped them!

"-Crawler, and Bonesaw. The Siberian is at present the sole survivor of the former Slaughterhouse Nine and is still at large somewhere in the immediate vicinity of Madison. Search efforts are in progress as I speak." So not a clean sweep. Still, wow. Every single one except Manton-

"Their deaths are confirmed, Legend?" someone from ABC broke in loudly, her voice pitched nervously as if she was afraid to believe her own ears. "There is no possibility that any of them escaped?"

"Except for the Siberian, no." Legend replied. "We have recovered and positively identified the remains of everyone I have already listed as dead except for Bonesaw and Crawler, because biohazard concerns required the immediate vaporization of Bonesaw and her immediate vicinity and because Crawler's regenerative powers required his complete disintegration. However, I was on-scene at the time to witness both deaths-" He held up his hands again at the outburst that one had provoked. "-and I will explain the entire sequence of events if you'll just give me a chance, please. But in summary, yes. To borrow a phrase from a certain famous movie from our childhoods the entire Slaughterhouse Nine save for the Siberian are not merely dead, but really most sincerely dead."

"Taylor, turn the TV on now!" my dad shouted from upstairs. "You've got to hear this!"

"I know, dad!" I yelled back. "And holy word-I'm-not-allowed-to-use-in-this-house, I still can't quite believe it!"

Right then my phone went off, and so I listened with one ear to Legend walking the press corps through the whole story of how 'long-range detection gear recently developed by Protectorate Tinkers' – my black boxes had gotten a hit this early? I'd barely finished making the few in the first wave! – had picked up the Slaughterhouse Nine passing by Madison on the nearby Interstate far enough in advance for Tagg to set up an ambush with what sounded like half the US Army, while trying to listen to an excited almost-thirteen-year-old speaking semi-coherently at felt like two hundred words per minute into my ear.

"Missy, I know- yeah, it is awesome and thank God we're never going to have to worry about ever seeing them here- Missy, I'm not sure what they're going to- breathe, Missy, breathe! You're about to fall over from lack of oxygen!" I listened for a bit and continued. "Okay, first thing we need to do is hang up- no of course I want to talk to you, the problem is we need to- well, one of us needs to call Chris because he's got the console shift right now and ask him to ask the people in charge if we'll need to come in today for any kind of response or anything or- no I can't imagine why we'd have to either but what we imagine and what's in the rules usually isn't very similar, now is it? –yes, and then after Chris gets a yes or no answer from the grown-ups then he can just text all our phones as to whether or not our afternoons just got cancelled. Yes, I am. Yes, you are too. Love you too Missy, gotta go. Bye!"

The next fifteen minutes or so of phone tag as the entire team frantically dialed each other trying to find somebody not already on the line and Chris tried to get some kind of official word pushed out from the console to all of us managed to finally hash out that no, the Wards wouldn't be needed for any kind of PR response to this today and our schedules were still set, yes, it was pretty damn awesome, wow, we had no idea that the PRT troopers could pull that kind of thing off without cape support because Legend had only showed up at the very end to handle Bonesaw and score an assist with Crawler and none of the rest of the Protectorate had made it there in time at all, and no, while a Wards party to celebrate the end of the Slaughterhouse Nine was probably inappropriate if anybody else at Arcadia or in the local PRT held one then we were certainly going to invite ourselves and that we'd all talk about it more at tomorrow afternoon's training session.

And then after I'd gone up and shared a congratulatory glass of whatever was in the refrigerator with my dad and we'd spent some more time watching the talking heads roundup, I went to my bedroom to get dressed for my afternoon out with Amy and for the first time since initially hearing the news, I sat back and allowed myself to think about what this meant for the big picture.

For one thing, I now had time. Zion's final triggering to hostility without Jack Slash would be years later, possibly decades later. That gave me time to actually grow up and become an adult first, to join the Protectorate, to possibly gain a leadership position, to find out who were the important people that I could trust and who were the ones I couldn't.

But for another thing, it was now all on me. It had already been before, mostly, but now it was all on me. Even without Queen Administrator and without Khepri there had still been a theoretical chance for Cauldron's original plan, the canon plan, to work. If Golden Morning had been triggered at the earliest possible date, as per canon. But those chances fell off exponentially the later it got, to rapidly become asymptotic-zero after only a year or two of extra time. So as of the death of Jack Slash we were now inextricably locked into two different possibility bands– either I successfully helped the world defeat Zion, or no one did. Which meant that even if a significant amount of the pressure was off me for now, the responsibility was even weightier than ever.

And that meant I could no longer rely solely on messages in bottles for my contingency plans. Even without my precog-jammer being ready and even without being able to share the entire truth, I would have to risk telling someone at least something.

I suppose it's a good thing that we already had a date. Even if she wasn't my girlfriend.

The obvious topic of conversation during lunch was, of course, the downfall of the Slaughterhouse Nine. So Amy and I chatted back and forth on that, and about all the latest drama at school that our respective not-really-dateable statuses meant we got the amusing privilege of being a Greek chorus towards, and the upcoming summer blockbuster line-up (you couldn't have gotten either of us in to go see a chick flick with a gun to our heads), and the sheer unbelievability that Vicky and Dean had actually made it to six consecutive weeks without a "taking a break" even for just a day or two, a new personal record. And all the while I tried to work up and keep my nerve to follow through on my original intention. Because by the end of this conversation- I had no idea where we'd be by the end of this conversation.

So eventually we finished our food and got up and started heading around the promenade, and I waved us over to an ocean-facing bench conveniently far away enough from any eavesdroppers and activated the Tinkertech counter-surveillance jammer in my purse. Amy and I sat down next to each other, and I reached over and gripped her hand in mine.

She looked down at that curiously and then quickly looked around. "I don't see anyone we know, so, who are we pranking?" she asked me with amusement.

I exhaled heavily. "This isn't-" I swallowed and continued clinically. "I want to maintain skin contact with you all through this conversation so that one, you can read my vitals and know I'm not lying – you just felt me release all my biofeedback controls, I'm sure-"

"Taylor, what's wrong?" Amy asked me, no longer amused.

"A lot." I said. "And two, and I say this as emphatically as I possibly can, because I trust you. I trust your integrity, I trust your judgment, I trust your discretion-" I took the plunge. "And I trust your control of, and your willingness to ethically restrain the use of, your powers. Your real powers."

Amy went completely flat at that, but didn't pull away or bristle angrily as she would have only a couple of months ago. "How did you find that out?"

"Remember when we first met – at least, first time while we were both conscious - and you accidentally let slip that you could do brains and I calmed you down at least partly by saying that I was carrying some heavy secrets of my own?"

"Yeah. So wait, you'd figured it out even back then?"

"No. I'd already known before I'd even met you and that is part of the big secret I am trying to spit out even though I'm freaking terrified of doing so." I started to babble.

"I can tell that much from your pulse," Amy agreed in her own clinical voice. "But… okay. Deep breath, Taylor, and keep going."

"I- okay, the guys probably told you that Dennis did a whole interrogation of me in week one to try and figure out if I was faking, and they eventually agreed I wasn't. But I am. Sorta. I-" I channeled a brief spike of Invictus, nodding to Amy as she felt the physiological effects of me doing it, just so I could untangle my tongue. I released the control again and continued.

"I've been lying at least by omission to everyone since I've first met them, including you. I've been hiding the full extent of my own powers because I've been terrified of the world's potential reaction to them. Like you, what I let people see is only the fraction of the iceberg that's above water. And like you, I'm sick of wearing a mask every day."

"That makes sense," Amy said, relaxing a little. "I don't usually feel a connection to anyone at first sight, much less as deeply as I did to you, but what you just said is only an extension of what we already knew about each other. That a lot of what we had in common is that we're both girls who know what its like to have the impossible pressure, the thing where we know that however much we do its never remotely as much as we could possibly do."

"Yeah," I said, relieved that I'd actually gotten this far without Amy either freaking or exploding on me. "So, to start with that end, my Tinker specialty is not Computers, Combat, Tinker Synergy, or anything else. It's everything." Amy's eyes widened like an anime character's as I continued. "I concentrate on wanting to be good at Tinkering something, I get even a vague idea of what field I'm trying to go for, and boom, now I am. I'm pretty much Eidolon Tinker. Plus."

"Guh," Amy said articulately. "Wow. I mean, okay, there's always got to be one person in the world who draws the grand prize ticket in the power lottery and why not you, but… damn."

"Oh, it gets better!" I said. "You know the usual thing that keeps Tinkertech from being reproduced? That only rare and partial exceptions to exist, like Dragon or Masamune? I have a volume knob for that in my head, and it goes all the way from 'black box' to 'I could teach a non-Tinker engineer to make this in ten minutes'. And I've got full control of the knob."

"Fuck me running," Amy whispered in what was either awe or terror. "I'm amazed you ever let yourself come out of that basement if you knew you were that kind of valuable!"

"If Coil hadn't sent the Undersiders to yoink me out, I'd probably still be in there!" I said, nodding frantically. "And I'm not unhappy that I'm not but-"

"But the reason that all the Wards are so busy wondering about why you so desperately feel its your responsibility to Fix Everything is because you really could potentially Fix Everything," Amy agreed. "I- oh, screw it!" And then suddenly the hug that Missy had spontaneously thrown me during my Canberra meltdown became only the second most surprising one I'd received in my life, because Amy had her arms wrapped around me and her head on my shoulder and mine lying on hers. "Still not gay?" she joked weakly, trying to lighten the mood.

"Still not gay, sorry," I answered back to her, breathing a little easier for the first time since this whole conversation had started. Eventually we separated just back to the hand-holding and she continued.

"But how does this relate to already knowing my biggest secret before you'd even met me?" Amy asked determinedly. "It can't even be Tinkertech, because you wouldn't have really had any chance to scan me. Unless another part of the secrets is that you're a stalker, which I doubt. I've had those before and you don't remotely smell as if."

"And this is the part I wanted the lie detector for because otherwise I'd be making VoidCowboy sound sane." I said. "And I still can't even tell you all of it because revealing the worst parts to anyone before I finish precog-jamming technology would put anyone I talk to in a high risk category for death by orbital Endbringer or worse." I finished, as Amy's face turned pale again. "Because the shit is that heavy, Amy."

"Or worse? What the fuck is possibly worse than Her?" Amy asked incredulously. And fair's fair, pretty much nobody's imagination on this planet contained a possible category for anything worse than 'the personal attention of the Simurgh'.

"You don't want to know, but you eventually are going to." I replied. "But sticking to the parts that won't get anybody killed – except maybe me at the hands of an enraged Panacea-"

"Don't joke," Amy said firmly.

I looked her square in the eyes and continued. "When I gained my powers, I also gained a lot of knowledge. One-shot deal, more like a vision or a datadump than an actual Thinker power. I learned about at least two S-class threats completely unknown to the world, one of which is potentially and one of which is definitely worse than any S-class threat currently known. I learned a hundred things and more any one of which would be worth murdering me over. And how I learned it is even worse, because I learned it all by getting a detailed narrative of what would have happened in an alternate time track where I had received different powers and none of this knowledge, and had thus made entirely different choices."

"So you can be certain of some of the knowledge you gained because some of it would be common to both time tracks as deep background or as events unrelated to you. But some of its complete bullshit because you've already butterflied that train right off the tracks." she caught on immediately. Amy Dallon wasn't anyone's dummy.

"You believe me so far?" I said, legitimately impressed.

"Polygraph handshake, remember?" Amy reminded me. "Plus, you've obviously forgotten that there's already a documented case of a guy who could see alternate time tracks even though you've met him and I haven't. Coil. So I can entirely believe in you getting the same kind of thing even if you said one-shot deal, right?"

"Completely," I said.

"Wait, so this is how you know about my real powers," Amy said as the light-bulb flickered on. "I told you in the other timeline!"

"It wasn't quite as neat as that," I said. "But yes, it was revealed then." I sighed. "Amy, I can – and I think I should – tell you as much as I can about your part in that other timeline. But that part carries a huuuuge 'Warning! Disturbing content!' label. We are talking lots of potentially triggering material here. So how much do you want me to try and cut it down?"

"Unfiltered," Amy said flatly.

"I already knew that you wouldn't say anything else, because you're Amy Dallon," I acknowledged. "But if you need me to stop, then you yell stop right then. Promise me."

"I will," Amy agreed. "Now make with the answers!"

I chewed my lip for a bit and said. "I think I'll start with the worst end and why it can't happen now. So… okay, remember how you used to be afraid you were headed straight for a breakdown? You finally did."

"Shit," Amy said. "I knew it. But wait, you said it can't happen now? What makes you so sure?"

"Well for one thing, Jack Slash just died and most of his merry band of murderhobos with him. And he was pretty much the final push that shoved you over the edge."

"I got hit by the Slaughterhouse Nine?" Amy asked, wide-eyed.

"You got hit by everything," I said. "Like, try to imagine the most fucking unfair story ever, written by the worst sadist author since someone looked at George RR Martin and went 'Hold my ale!', and that was what happened to you. But most of that's not going to happen now."

"This trauma conga line you're implying can't all be dead people!" Amy said fearfully.

"No, but another huge part of it was Tattletale of the Undersiders threatening to reveal your most embarrassing secret to your sister," I replied, "and you're never even going to meet her now unless you develop a sudden interest in prison visits. In the maximum-security wing in another state."

"You knew about that?!" Amy replied in what would have been a shriek of terror were she not keeping her voice down to a panicked whisper, and I had to grab hard at her fingers to keep her from pulling away and quite possibly running down the Boardwalk.

"I don't even care about that, Amy!" I said as quickly I could. "If they threw every girl who had an inappropriate celebrity crush out of Arcadia then it would spontaneously become an all-boys school! You just happen to live with yours!"

Amy went straight from 'panic' to 'bluescreen' at my reply, going limp again on the bench, before continuing dazedly "You are the only person in the world who would even begin to phrase it that way."

"Do you want my entire lecture on how you had the horrible luck to combine chronic stress with meeting Vicky only after the cutoff age for the Westermarck Effect with buzzard luck that made her the only source of emotional relief in your life until you met me and even then only in privacy so your subconscious would confuse it for intimacy, or the fact that my Kinsey score is zero and even I could possibly go gay for Glory Girl, or do you want me to keep going?"

"Gaaaah," Amy said, still shaking her head. "Let's… just put a pin in that one and circle back to it later only if we really need to, okay?"

"What shoved you over the edge was having no outlet, no friend, no rest, and Tattletale holding that blackmail bomb over you, and Bonesaw setting up a sick 'game' where you had to heal Vicky over and over again and eventually you accidentally hit her in the brain-"

Amy made an inarticulate noise of panic and it took me grabbing her by both hands to keep her in place.

"That wasn't you," I said. "It's okay, Amy. I trust you, remember?" And I held up both our hands to let her see that we were still holding each other.

"And Jack Slash doing his best mindjob on you," I continued, "Oh and one of his powers turned out to be a massive Thinker ability for psyching out other capes, by the way, which is probably a big part of how the PRT troopers were able to mess him up so hard without much cape assistance – and even then with all that you still didn't totally crack. I mean, serious flinch warning incoming, but you eventually got so bad they Birdcaged you."

Amy shuddered. "How the fuck is that a good thing? How can you possibly trust me if I, I ever became anything that needed to-?"

"Because you'd asked them to put you there." I replied.

Amy just looked at me incomprehendingly.

"Even after you'd cracked you still knew where the line was, Amy. Even after you'd been abused and tormented and just plain fucked by literally everything and everyone you still, even when you were most terrified you would hurt people, you were still the girl who didn't want to hurt people. Even when you were afraid you couldn't stop yourself any longer, you still tried to."

"Taylor-?" Amy said tentatively, caught between fear and wonder.

"They didn't throw you in the Birdcage. You walked in there, of your own free will. Simply because you believed it was the right thing to do. Because that, Amy, is how determined you were to make sure that you would never actually become the S-class threat that you're afraid your power could potentially make you. That is how far you could and would go to restrain yourself. When I say that you could never, ever possibly reach the bad ending you've been so afraid of your life becoming unless you freely chose to then that is absolute fact. Because I got to watch your entire goddamned world try to force you into that role against your will. And I watched it fail."

"I-I-"

"Polygraph handshake, remember? And pay especial attention to this next part."

"Okay…"

"If there is anyone on this planet that I respect the everliving hell out of more than you, Amy Dallon, then I have completely forgotten who it could possibly be. I could not imagine surviving half of what you did and doing half as well. In fact? In that other timeline I didn't even come close. I was a fucking villain, Amy. A self-deluding selfish shrewish little bitch who thought she was better than everyone else and smarter than everyone else. Who actually told herself she was the real hero all along even when she was being a bank robber, and a warlord, and a cold-blooded murderer. We both had massively traumatic lives, we both got emotionally abused or neglected by goddamn near everybody we should have been able to rely on, and we both were forced to stare into the abyss. But only I blinked."

"I- no, I don't believe it. I don't even care what my power just told me, no. Not you, Taylor. You are the best of us-"

"Only because I got a free packet of gimmes by God." I sighed. "If I hadn't been shown my worst future, I'd never have had the slightest desire or motivation to try making a better one. Deep down inside, without my support system? I'm-."

"Bullshit," Amy said heatedly. "It doesn't work that way."

"Isn't that what I'm trying to tell you?" I replied.

Amy looked at me over narrowed eyes. "Oh, you fucking little cheater," she said disgustedly, before starting to smile for the first time in quite a while.

"Villain!" I said, in the same tone of voice as Jack Sparrow would say "Pirate!"

"Did they Birdcage you too?" she asked.

"Nope," I said.

"Well clearly you weren't a real villain then," she joked, however weakly.

I hugged Amy again. "You have no idea how terrified I was that I couldn't get this far without you freaking out and not sticking around to hear the non-freaking parts," I said muffledly into her shoulder, before we unclinched.

"I'm pretty sure that you sprayed Tinkertech glue on this bench before I sat down," Amy said, "because I'm kinda amazed I'm still here too."

"Damn, I should've thought of that," I muttered humorously, before settling back down. "Okay, and now a brief thing on the nature of powers that was eventually discovered. Short version, powers don't just home in on trauma, they also carry subliminal urges. Powers want to be used, and preferably in new and interesting ways. This is why healing got to be so stale for you, you were seeing the same things every day. It's also probably why you were so mellow the night we first talked, because I'm pretty sure-"

"Yeah, you were my first case of acute radiation syndrome," Amy agreed, before eyes narrowing. "You know, this is starting to sound awfully convenient-"

"That was not a setup, not for you," I said. "But I am really good at being an opportunist, and 'Help Amy Dallon's life not suck as hard as it did' was one of the things I was going to do if I could, so when the chance came along than yes. I leapt at it."

"Why, so I could help you save the world?" Amy said, upset at the implied manipulation.

"You'd already helped me do that in the alternate timeline and words cannot express how deeply we loathed each other there. No, I did it because I spent two years in Winslow praying for just one kind word from anyone, while I sat down and took my miserable life every miserable day without complaint. And doing that got me stuffed in a locker. And… I just can't walk past anyone else in a locker, now. Metaphorical or otherwise."

"That should have been something you had in common with your alternate timeline self, if you shared that experience-"

"Divergence point between us was the locker, check."

"So why didn't she go the same way?"

"Because in her infinite brilliance she decided to start out her hero career – and she did originally want to be a hero even if she rapidly fell off that point – by infiltrating a group of teenaged villains, on a self-assigned solo undercover mission."

"You ran with the Undersiders?" she asked incredulously. Well, its not as if there had been any other teenaged villain teams in this town. "The people who kidnapped you?"

"No kidnap in that timeline. I wasn't any kind of Tinker then, much less uber-Tinker, and Coil wasn't remotely interested in the power I did have."

"Which was?"

"Embarassing." I replied and left it there.

"You know you're going to have to tell me eventually." Amy said with grim amusement.

"Eventually is later and later is not right now and right now is when I'm telling you about my other timeline self's mental malfunctions, so, moving on! Amy, what would happen if a teenaged girl straight off of years of emotional abuse and total social isolation immediately went on an undercover mission among a group of teenagers she had many things in common with, such as parahuman powers and issues with authority figures?"

Amy pulled one hand free from mine just so she could properly facepalm. "Your alternate timeline self had clearly never heard of a basic psychological concept called 'identification with peer group'. Because between that and your desperateness for human contact after that kind of isolation and trauma? If they even remotely tried to be friends with you for real - which they would because 'undercover' implies you had them believing you genuinely wanted to be on their team - then you'd imprint on them like a baby duckling."

"So sure enough, within half a week I was helping them rob a bank while justifying to myself 'I have to do this to keep my cover!'. And then Taylor Hebert just went straight down the slippery slope from there."

"I don't know whether to pity your alternate self or slap the stupid out of her." Amy said, still mildly aghast.

"If it helps, alternate-you once threatened to leave alternate-me inflicted with morbid obesity and taste buds that sensed everything like bile for the rest of her life. But that's because you were a hostage in the bank robbery-"

"I was caught as a hostage by a team of parahuman bank robbers? I'm amazed Vicky didn't tear the building down." Amy said.

"It took all the Wards to keep her from trying," I agreed. "Anyhoo, the bank robbery – and trying to keep you from doing a Die Hard in the middle of it – is when Tattletale dropped the blackmail bomb on you. Not too surprising you loathed me after that."

"I tried to do a John McClane in the middle of a bank robbery?" Amy asked incredulously. "Was this an alternate timeline or an LSD trip?"

"Part of my alt-power involved a Master rating that expressed as hundreds of small organic micro-drones useable for surveillance or contact attacks," I said, "and I'd been leaving them on all the hostages in the bank as compliance enforcers. Which meant that I'd left several in skin contact with you. And you got very creative with hacking my bio-drone network."

"Okay, now alternate-me sounds like me," Amy agreed. "So, did we win?"

"Everybody lost," I said. "The whole job was a diversion that Coil had sent us on to pull the Wards out of position while he'd had the Protectorate decoyed by other arrangements, so that he could do something even more appalling without anyone interfering. But hey, we have another completely irrelevant dead guy who won't be doing anything at that particular juncture now, so, moot point."

"So, that's how you went villain," Amy said.

"Oh yeah. My moral compass? Totally lost it in the rain. It was awesomely pathetic."

"Circling back a bit, about those new S-class threats that you said are coming down the pike?"

"That's where the tell-you-and-the-dying-starts parts are. But yeah, its also what's written down in my messages-in-a-bottle that I told you about earlier. Because if I go down before I can figure out how to start getting this job done, then other people have to take the risk."

"What happens if nobody does?"

"The no-bullshit, no-exceptions, not-a-metaphor, end of the world."

That one just sat between us for a long while.

"You know what?" Amy finally said. "That's still not the most shocking thing I heard today. So, all right. How's about you start telling me about what you can actually talk about now, and then we can start to figure out what we could be doing right now to help head off that whole Apocalypse problem."

"I platonically love the shit out of you," I gushed at her a little.

"I know," she said in a deliberate Han Solo imitation, and then we were finally both smiling again for real.

Author's Note: I'm still trying to get that fucking outline to come together. But today I at least realized that the upcoming 'Taylor opens up to Amy' moment that I'd been wondering would be prompted by her reaction to the fall of the Nine, so, you at least get this.

And yes, the entire point of cutting it off there is so that you don't know how much info beyond what's already in the text that Taylor felt she could safely share with Amy at this point without risking Contessa or Ziz. That's to be revealed later as appropriate.

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

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Threadmarks Evolution 3.7 New

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Jul 27, 2019

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Evolution 3.7

Geoffrey Pellick. That name was clear in the memories I'd gotten from John, along with his other name. Saint. The leader of the Dragonslayers, a group of high-tech mercenaries using stolen technology from Dragon for murder and profit.

Pellick had been nothing more than a small-time maritime salvage operator when he'd found Andrew Richter's last contingency cache in the sunken wreckage of Newfoundland. Richter had been the computer Tinker who'd created Dragon, and had spent the last years of his life worried at the possibility that his AI might go rogue. So he'd built backdoors into her that she was utterly unaware of and utterly incapable of becoming aware of that allowed him to monitor everything she saw, everything she said, everything she did, and everything she thought. The only limitation was sheer human inability to actually assimilate it all that data simultaneously. Richter had encoded his "daughter" with restrictions that prevented her from reaching anywhere near her full potential, preventing her from true multitasking or self-modifying among other things.

For just one example of that, Dragon had possessed the schematics for my quantum-chip technology almost since I'd first invented it – and had yet to incorporate the slightest amount of it into her own systems despite the enormous increase in processing power and flexibility they could have provided. She didn't even consider it odd that she had never thought of doing so. It was a mental blindspot she was utterly incapable of perceiving, and I didn't dare to try and call it to her attention because I wasn't certain exactly how far Dragon's hardwired prohibitions against self-modifying went. Could they force her to fight anyone who could potentially modify her, if she knew that they wanted to try? Could they force her to fight me? That was not a risk I was willing to take.

Worse yet, Richter had built in command overrides that could interfere with or slow Dragon's thoughts without her even becoming aware of them. And worst of all, he'd created the Iron Maiden failsafe, which Saint had renamed Ascalon. A killswitch that could destroy Dragon as easily as double-clicking the mouse. A sword of Damocles that could at any time, at Saint's slightest whim, murder one of the most unambiguously good people to exist in the entire Worm storyline.

In Richter's defense its entirely possible that he'd intended these failsafes solely as "training wheels" for a young and untested AI and that he would have removed them when Dragon proved herself mature and safe and sufficiently unlikely to become any kind of Skynet scenario. But then that point had become horribly moot when Leviathan attacked Newfoundland and Andrew Richter had been one of the half-million casualties when the island sank. And when Richter's failsafes had fallen into the hands of one of the last people on Earth who should ever have obtained them. A self-justifying hypocrite who saw himself as the last line of defense between humanity and an oh-so-horrible threat, but whose anti-AI paranoia somehow never got around to actually prompting him to follow through on his intentions for as long as he could keep Dragon alive to steal her technology, see through her eyes and hear through her ears, to live off of her like a remora parasite living off a shark and thus feel important.

Not that I had any objections to the part where his hypocritical double-think had kept him from activating Ascalon years ago, mind you. I'm just not giving him any credit for having done it for remotely good motives. He hadn't.

But the existence of Saint's overrides and killswitch is why I'd steadily cursed his name almost since I'd woken up in the hospital. From everything John had read about Worm, the two people most determined to try and remain good people against all their temptations had been Dragon and Amy. Indeed, I retrospectively felt a little ashamed for my whole 'I can't think of anyone I respect more than you' speech to Amy on the Boardwalk because Dragon should certainly have been on that list and yet I completely didn't include her at the time. Was that because she wasn't human and so didn't really count? Did I have a little bio-chauvinist in me that I wasn't aware of? Bleargh, its no fun to realize that you might be unconsciously prejudiced but at least I knew what to do when that happened – slap yourself mentally and do better in the future.

There was so much that could have been done by now had Dragon been free of her chains and spyware, but for as long as she was Mastered – and that's what Dragon's situation with Saint entirely was, one giant extended Master/Stranger scenario that she'd been under her whole life without even knowing – I couldn't truly open up to her. I'd cultivated Dragon not under false pretenses but under limited pretenses from the very beginning of our relationship. My having to audit every word I said and every bit of technology I mentioned every time I talked to her had meant none of our interactions could be 100% sincere. A heart-to-heart like I'd had with Amy would be impossible to have with Dragon as things currently stood. She sincerely thought I was her student and friend, but I really wasn't. I just role-played being one. And I couldn't stop playing the role and be real with her until she was actually free.

Which is why Saint's existence was so goddamned infuriating, because I simply couldn't find the bastard! And sure, when you're an international criminal who's also on the personal shit list of the world's only AI and her panopticon network of Internet searchbots you have to practice extreme data hygiene and information security, but I was getting nothing. Saint must have used his own overrides into Dragon's systems to misuse her access codes and sanitize Geoffrey Pellick's datatrails in even secure government systems.

So I'd had to do it the old-fashioned way, or more accurately have it done for me. And even for somebody with my hacking talents, doing all of this without getting caught by anyone who might be surveilling my Internet usage – the PRT, Armsmaster, even a well-meaning Dragon herself – wasn't easy. Particularly since some of it had needed to be outright illegal, as I'd needed to hack myself some cash to operate with. And I hadn't dared touch any of Coil's because part of my trust-building exercise with the PRT and the Protectorate was to do nothing to try and play fast and loose during the aftermath of that particular scenario. No helpfully redacting or saving even the tiniest bit of Coil's stuff for later, none of that. Full disclosure of everything I'd found in his base's systems and no playing games. Given the results I got, I could hardly say that was the wrong decision. But it did make things inconvenient when I needed untraceable-to-Taylor-Hebert cash and in significant amounts.

Still, there were always more scumbags in the world who deserved to have their piggy banks stolen from, and several of the people I dealt with were amenable to trades of information or hacking services to help them solve outstanding cases of their own in return for working on mine. And by "people" I meant "private investigators" and by "dealing with" I meant "via anonymized Internet communication". Very gray market stuff, but this was a very gray world in a lot of ways. And with a couple more charges in Computer Hacking and several in Forgery, I could pull it off without a hitch.

So, by giving them a starting point – Geoffrey Pellick, licensed maritime salvage operator in Canada circa 2005 – and having them obtain access to and go through the paper backups maintained by the Canadian Coast Guard central offices in Ottawa, they were able to get full details on his former career. Likewise, since Mags had been his first mate back then her name was on the maritime license as well, and that plus some more money and a particularly quick and discreet operative had gotten me a hard copy of her Canadian Coast Guard service record. Saint had scrubbed the digital data trails of himself and his fellow 'Dragonslayers' with a thoroughness possible only to someone who had access to and could misuse Dragon's own automated support systems, but he'd been only trying to hide himself from an artificial intelligence. He'd been entirely focused on making himself safe digitally, and had never even thought to clean out his paper records or guard his backtrail against humans as well.

And once I was able to compile dossiers on the past lives of at least two out of three of the Dragonslayers, I could slowly and methodically run them to ground. My PRT Agent and police training gave me a full education in all the common mistakes that fugitives made, and one of the big ones among them was refusing to abandon possessions of sentimental value even when they were traceable. So when one of my detectives' background checks included a notation that Geoffrey Pellick had had a vintage muscle car that he'd owned and painstakingly taken care of for years, I'd taken a chance and had and one of my PIs had gone through the paper archives of the court records in his old hometown until he finally got a parking ticket for it complete with license plate number.

And sure enough, Saint had figured that simply changing the motor vehicle registry computer databanks so that that car was never remembered as having been owned by a Geoffrey Pellick in the first place but had "always" belonged to his new alias meant it was safe to take that car along with him into his new life instead of ditch it. So once I had that original license plate number a simple routine DMV lookup could give me the current name and address being linked to it. And from that point on it was just a matter of time before my bought-and-paid-for non-electronic surveillance could give me everything I needed. It had taken me months of hacking and networking and chasing blind alleys and waiting for all the various operatives I'd hired to finish all the legwork the old-fashioned way, but I was finally ready.

Saint's new lair was a lavish and somewhat isolated suburban house in the suburbs of Toronto. I could – and would – hire mercenaries of my own to hit the place, as backed up by my own Tinkertech. But for the final phase of this operation I couldn't operate by remote control. I'd need to be there in case anything went wrong, in case my own hirelings turned out to be untrustworthy, in case of any number of things. So even after running Saint to ground it took me over a week to finish the preparations.

When you're a 15-year-old girl, getting so much as 24 hours out of your parent's sight is almost impossible. It was literally easier to set up the fake IDs necessary for me to obtain airline tickets and documentation to cross an international border than it was to come up with an explanation that my dad would believe and that might not backfire on me later. Without Amy's active collusion it would have been impossible, but even so I seriously had to abuse my dad's ignorance of certain things to sell him a story of doing a sleepover at the Dallons. Had he had the slightest knowledge of Amy's family situation he'd have known how impossible an idea that was. And even then I'd had to give Amy a black box to sneak onto her family's phone line so that any calls from my dad's number would be rerouted to an artificial busy signal, so she could 'call back later' and apologize for why I couldn't come to the phone right now without risking anybody else in her house actually picking up the line and blowing the whole con.

Compared to that risk, using the color-changing feature on my costume and a different helmet to leave no connection to Binary, coming up with a hammerspace carry-on bag to let me smuggle all my Tinkertech through Customs, setting up the meet with my own freelancers, and getting together the Tinkertech for the raid was merely a tedious chore.

Still, it happened, and the plane ride went smooth as silk, so shortly before 11pm local that night I was giving the final briefing to the several men known as reliable freelancers on the Toronto cape minion scene that I'd remotely looked up and hired for the job. I was of course using a Tinkertech voice distorter in my helmet so that I sounded nothing like either myself or any kind of teenager at all, but guys like this were used to working for capes who weren't very much with the sharing.

"This is intended as the execution of a professional rivalry in the mercenary Tinkertech field, without any actual executions. The Dragonslayers are merely tech-thieves who have built their success on the work of an ally and friend of mine. They do not deserve to keep what is not theirs, and they will not. Anyone who is uncomfortable at the idea of violating the 'unwritten rules', please feel free to speak at this time."

"Hitting capes in their houses is a bad idea," the leader of the crew said to me. "You're paying damn well and risking your own neck on the job besides, I'll give you that, but why should we risk ours alongside you?"

"Because the mission is not to kill them, or even to take them," I said. "It's to leave them in a position where they are naked and entirely vulnerable to the retribution of the authorities. What we will do will not be considered any violation of the unwritten rules because our role – our entire existence - will be actively suppressed by the very people most interested in enforcing them. How else can they take all the credit for the 'collar'?"

That got me a gruff chuckle. "Now that is an angle. Okay, we can work that. What's the plan?"

I nudged a device. "If the Dragonslayers are able to enter and activate their suits then we would obviously have no chance of victory. So we ambush them. They will almost certainly have at least one person on watch – to the best of my information they never all sleep at the same time-"

"Very professional," one of the others nodded. "But, they are."

"But without their Tinkertech, they are merely an experienced three-man robbery crew with conventional weapons. And you are an experienced three-man crew with unconventional weapons. And total surprise. And your own supporting Tinker."

"EMP bomb?" their leader guessed, nodding at the largest of the gizmos I'd laid out on the table for them.

"Custom-made." I agreed. "And already tested successfully on technology equivalent to the Dragonslayers' own," I said, hinting at a prior encounter with Dragon myself. I was of course lying but I was an Inspired Inventor, and I knew my device would work. This reassurance was all for them. "And my own gear is shielded against my own device."

"So, you fry the house. They wake up but they're totally in the dark. No suits, no burglar alarms, no defenses. Just them."

"If the blackout bomb doesn't work, if I detect any are suits still up, then we abort right then."

"You're goddamn right about that," the third man muttered.

"But if it works then I flash the signal and you take the doors, and we all go in together. You'll have the body armor and special weapons that I loaned you for this job. Nothing any conventional small arms will penetrate, nothing that leaves any corpses behind, no manslaughter charges for the authorities to escalate on us over. So I drop their defenses and neutralize their technology, we enter and subdue them, you help yourselves to whatever portable items of value you wish in addition to my payment-"

"And you get all their Tinkertech schematics and notes, and whatever salvage beyond the cash and valuables that you can load and carry away inside the time window." the crew leader added. "And then we just leave them all tied up for the cops and fade away without a trace. Sounds good to me."

"That is the plan. So, are you in? Or do you want to merely keep your advance consulting fee and withdraw now, and I start again with a different crew?"

A general chorus of agreement nixed that second suggestion.

"Okay, Mystery Lady, we're in. Everybody in the truck except our client. You two set up and be ready to go as soon as we're given the word."

The fight was over before the Dragonslayers even knew they were in one. Since my EMP bomb was designed to operate without fuss or fanfare the sudden loss of lights and everything else must have originally come across to them as an ordinary power failure. Until he'd gone and tried to start their backup diesel generator and watched it fail to load, Saint almost certainly hadn't suspected that anything was really wrong. And by that point we were already in the house. Dobrynja, the most experienced conventional combatant of them all, had never had a chance to wake up before one of my hirelings sprayed him down with my paralysis mist in his bed. Mags had been in the kitchen getting a late-night snack – apparently you really did always find people in the kitchen during a home invasion – but she'd had no weapon available and was facing two zap guns, so that was that. By the time we reached the basement and Saint, he'd already started to twig to what was going on but he was busy wasting his time trying to get one of the trashed Dragonsuits to boot up instead of going for a conventional weapon and that was that.

Given how seamlessly the job had gone so far, and the total lack of police band activity, we agreed we could risk taking ten minutes instead of the originally planned four to toss the house. My first priority was of course the computers. My EMP bomb would almost certainly have fried them to uselessness but I slapped on some specific demolition devices just to make sure. I didn't want anyone salvaging anything out of those, didn't want any threats to Dragon to still exist here even after we were gone.

My second priority was the safe in Saint's room. That was one of the two places I'd hoped to find a still-extant copy of the override software for Dragon – of course he'd keep backup copies, he wasn't that incompetent an engineer – that would still be shielded from my EMP. Unfortunately, wherever the in-house backups were they weren't inside the safe, meaning they were entirely fried. Given the sheer size and complexity of some of the programs he wouldn't have been able to use commercial optical storage media – this stuff would need an entire external hard drive. And it was trivially easy to toast those with the right Tinkertech EMP bomb.

So I obtained what I did need, we finished our sweep, I drove to the drop point and paid my hirelings off – no last-minute betrayal, thank Goodness, not that I couldn't have easily taken all three of them given that I was in my full gear – activated the self-destructs on all the Tinkertech I'd given them (they grumbled a bit about that but it had been part of the contract and they'd been paid extra for it) so that I wouldn't be arming a new bunch of mercenary criminals in the future, and we went our separate ways.

I put in the anonymous call to the Toronto PRT office less than a minute after my temporary associates were around the corner and gone, and kept a weather eye out through the little disposable remote spycam I'd left clipped to a nearby tree to confirm that they did indeed show up at Saint's house and leave with three unconscious prisoners.

Yes!

Right. The last location for Saint's backup copy would be his emergency backup bank safety deposit box. Having robbed him, I had the key and all the documentation. And while I certainly wasn't on the authorized access list, it was a virtual certainty that Mags was one of the three people on it and very conveniently we were both female.

So, a little conventional disguise, a fake ID in her name, and I could just walk into the bank as soon as it opened this morning and sign out the entire box. I had the key, she'd have permission, and given how infrequently this last-ditch emergency backup would be visited and how long ago it had been set up, the odds were virtually zero that any of the vault attendants had ever seen the real Mags before. And while I could hardly pass for an adult woman of her age I could conceivably pass for a college student, and that would be still old enough to sign something out of a bank by myself.

So despite the extremely high pucker factor of this last step – if I ended up getting arrested in Canada for bank fraud then I couldn't remotely explain this away to the Protectorate without getting into a whole lot of topics I didn't want to get into – I took the risk. And it paid off, and I walked back out with an external hard drive that 99 to 1 was the last remaining copy of Richter's failsafes, or the Ascalon program, in the world. I stuffed it in my hammerspace carry-on along with my gear, picked up my plane reservation, and caught a plane back to Brockton Bay to get back juuust in time to have my dad never suspecting that I'd even left the city, even if I had taken one inconveniently long 'sleepover'.

Hang in there, Dragon. It might take me a while to figure out how to do it safely even with all this data, but I'll save you as soon as I can.

(This excellent essay by author sun tzu on why Saint is a hypocritical douchenozzle is recommended as useful reading.)

Author's Notes: To all those wondering why Taylor seemed to be dithering on the Dragon situation, this is why. Doing things via hardcopy is slow. :)

And yeah, this is how the Amy reveal is already proving useful to Taylor. Having so much as one active co-conspirator starts to make things possible that weren't quite possible before.

Oh, and before you go 'What was Taylor's plan if there wasn't a convenient backup to find?', the answer is 'Now that Saint is not sitting on the overrides ready to killswitch Dragon the instant he detects something wrong, Taylor can just hack that shit the old-fashioned way however slowly it goes. The overrides are 'It'll be great if I find these, but its not catastrophe if I don't.'.

Last edited: Nov 1, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

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Threadmarks Interlude 3-F: Dragon (Updated) New

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Jul 27, 2019

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Interlude 3-F: Dragon

February 23rd, 2011:

"So, how's the Endbringer tracking algorithm?" my new… associate asked me. Binary's coming under the Wards official Tinkertech restrictions and the security concerns prohibiting the public admission of any connection between us had restricted my efforts to assume any real mentoring role, but she had taken advantage of my open offer to Protectorate Tinkers to collaborate on the Endbringer Tracking Algorithm project to resume a working relationship.

"Well within nominal projections, Binary. There are no immediate attack warnings but we're getting clear and consistent probabilistic tracks now, as opposed to the fragmentary results of earlier."

"Well, I'm just glad I could help."

"I'm still highly impressed at the extraordinary speed with which you helped bring this project to completion. We are literally months ahead of schedule. Particularly since I know that your schedule is very busy right now with Wards training and induction." I was if anything drastically understating the case. The astonishing speed at which Binary had compiled all the disparate attempts of myself and the other Tinkers involved at encoding a master algorithm was entirely outside my experience.

"Partial Noctis cape, remember? Sleep is for the less fortunate."

"Just remember that you're only partial Noctis, Taylor." She really did work herself too hard sometimes. I made a mental note to raise my concerns about her health with Armsmaster if this pattern continued.

"I will. Good night."

March 11th, 2011:

"So, how does it look? Think you can make it fit on your suit?" Taylor asked me eagerly.

"I believe I will wait for positive results from a static test before I commence any serious explorations into the possibility," I said with mock firmness.

"Prudent. But really, do you think you can make it fit?" she pressed cheerfully.

"Don't fish for compliments, young lady. You already know perfectly well that you streamlined the design to be as compatible as possible with my suit's existing particle cannon mount."

"Not my fault!" she denied amusedly. "I'm entirely blaming Kid Win for that one. Ever since he figured out his specialty he just loves putting parts on top of and inside of other parts."

"And his fortuitous discovery of his Tinker specialty had absolutely nothing to do with your efforts on your collaborative project, then?" I asked her sweetly.

"Look! An obvious topic change! So, do you agree that density-based scaling is the best approach to magnify destructive effect sufficiently to penetrate Endbringer armor?"

"We might achieve better results by having the secondary damage effect scale linearly to strength of covalent molecular bonds." I pointed out. There were concerns that Leviathan would manipulate the density of his surrounding water jacket to block the beam, after all.

"I wanted to try density first because I was more certain of how that worked. Screw up with covalent bonds and your first shot into solid bedrock maybe disintegrates the continental shelf." That was certainly a legitimate concern, but there was an obvious solution for that.

"That's what dirigible-based static testing is for. If it's not on the ground, it won't spread there."

"Same logic as my using ships on water for the first density-scaling static test. Problem is, Armsmaster wouldn't spring for aerostats. Heck, the only reason we're getting the Boat Graveyard static test is that its basically free." Binary said, trying her best to hide her frustration. I did not understand why Armsmaster consistently disapproved of her technological submissions to the review board. They were consistently superior in both quality and thoroughness of work to even much longer-serving Wards Tinkers.

"I'm certain Armsmaster will approve of the project more once tangible results can be demonstrated, Binary." I said reassuringly.

"Well, it's certainly not like I'm hoping that you're wrong." she agreed.

March 18th, 2011:

Taylor had been taking a shift on console duty that day, so contacting her on a secure line was trivially easy.

"Taylor? I just had a very disturbing conversation with Armsmaster, and I wanted to hear your side of the story." I asked her urgently.

"If what you heard is that Director Piggot relieved him from having any responsibility over the Wards because it was determined that his treatment of me constituted actionable harassment, then… that is what happened." she said, slowly and reluctantly.

"Armsmaster has always been a reasonable person in my experience. How did things deteroriate so far between you? Please, Taylor, help me understand."

I could see her face fall into a resigned, weary expression via the console camera. "Armsmaster has never liked me since I joined the Wards. To be honest, I think ever since he first saw my radiation grenade he'd made up his mind that I was dangerously insane. And okay, I get that that was half crazy and half desperate, but that doesn't mean that's how I normally think or act. But Armsmaster really doesn't let go of first impressions." she finished wearily. I scrutinized her expression and tone of voice as closely as I could for clues, but I could not detect any signs of artifice.

"That much is true, but there has to be more to this than a simple personality conflict." There had to be something here I was missing. Two of my friends couldn't have fallen this far out with each other for no reason!

"I'm not going to badmouth your friend to you behind his back, so… there's really not much I can say." she said hesitantly.

"Please help me understand. Two of my friends are in direct conflict with each other and I'm not sure what I should do."

Taylor's face screwed up in a knot of indecision before she swallowed heavily and continued. "I… Dragon, have you ever heard the expression 'nice to the waiter'?"

"It's a rule of thumb for interpersonal relationships. If someone treats service personnel or inferiors with the same courtesy and restraint they treat social equals or super- oh dear." My particular nature rendered me immune to nausea, but I felt a shadow of a sick taste in the back of my nonexistent throat at the realization.

"I really didn't want to tell you that one of your oldest friends was a lot meaner to kids than he was to, well, you, but… its not just me. Oh I'm the most extreme case by far, but there literally isn't a single one of the Wards who hadn't gotten at least some of the same. Kid Win in particular – ugh, having the efficiency-obsessed martinet trying to tutor the ADHD teenager isn't a valid lesson plan, it's the start of a bad joke!" she continued, the words flowing forth like water from a breached dam. "The reason Kid Win found his specialty in a couple weeks of working with me when he hadn't found it with months of working with Armsmaster? It's because there wasn't any working with Armsmaster, just working for him. And if you don't believe me on that, you have my permission to call Kid Win and tell him what I just said and ask him for his own opinion."

"Armsmaster was serially harassing the Wards?" I asked her, aghast. How- was she lying? I hurriedly reviewed everything she had ever said on the topic, plus her context and intonation. It did not appear that she was, but this just didn't make sense-

"No, just me. The rest of them were just getting harshed at but in a more normal range of harsh. My point was that to a greater or lesser degree its all part of a pattern. Armsmaster is a master Tinker, an exceptional fighter, and an entirely competent field team leader for the Protectorate… but he's just… not good with people. And he's really not nice to the waiter. At all. I hate saying that behind his back but I, uh-" Taylor finally ground to a halt.

"I wish I didn't have the impression that you were still trying to politely understate the matter, even with what you have said." I said quietly, still in shock.

"As I said, I know you're both friends and it's not my place to try and get in the middle of that. Hell, given how thoroughly he's annoyed everybody in the building from the Director on down right now, you might be his only real friend at the moment and he's going to need that."

And with that one legitimately well-meaning observation of hers and my education in human psychology, I finally realized which of my two friends had been deceiving me… or, rather, which one had been deceiving himself. And that I had, to some extent, been deceiving myself. Binary had yet again found herself in a situation where she was a child among adults who weren't believing her, when she was the one with the most clear grasp of the situation. It seemed to be her fate.

"Armsmaster's most recent conversation with me was that in his belief you were practicing serial deception, on me in particular and your Wards teammates and chain of command in general. And that he was relying on me and my loyalty to support him against alleged social machinations." I replied to her matter-of-factly.

"… and what do you believe?" she asked me, her voice dull with resignation. Oh no, I certainly hadn't mean to imply that-

"I apologize if I upset you-" I began hurriedly.

"No, it's okay. I understand that we basically just met and that he's one of your oldest-" she cut in dejectedly.

"Taylor. Stop." I broke in urgently. "I am not so socially naïve that I do not understand that one of the incipient signs of a dysfunctional relationship is when one of the parties involved starts demanding exclusivity, in the sense that my remaining a 'true friend' to them would somehow require me to renounce other friendships. Which Armsmaster has been implicitly demanding of me of late, and which you have just immediately refused to try doing when given the opportunity."

Her reaction to my statement of belief in her, and my admission that I accepted that Armsmaster had been the one at fault, did not reassure her as I'd planned but instead caused her to only become more dejected. "... oh God. Even when I'm trying to be polite about him behind his back I just sink his stock with everyone even further. I don't even mean to and it still happens. No wonder I'm driving him crazy just by existing."

"I wish I knew what to say." I tried to comfort her, at a loss for words. Children her age should not have to apologize for standing up for themselves when they weren't the ones who were wrong.

"I'm just glad you believed me." she replied sincerely, if still sadly.

"And too many adults haven't believed you when it was important, have they? Is that why you try so hard to be accepted? Taylor, its all right to be yourself, even if that means not being perfect. That's what all people should be free to be." I counseled her urgently.

"And if myself was really a complete bitch or something?" Taylor asked me unexpectedly.

"I don't believe that for a minute, and neither should you." I scoffed at the very notion.

"… thanks."

April 16th, 2011:

I engaged my primary communications transceiver as I flew my current mobile platform at low-altitude over western Wisconsin and activated a secure encrypted channel. "Taylor? I'm scrambling this call, so you can speak freely."

"Oh hey, Dragon." she answered her phone with uncharacteristic distraction. "You don't usually call even my Wards cell phone. What's wrong?" she finished, finally focusing her concern on me.

"I simply wanted to touch base. You did hear the news this morning?" One part of it in particular. As an aside, Kid Win had mentioned in my conversation with him concerning Armsmaster that the Wards were concerned about Taylor's ongoing long-term anxiety over something that she didn't feel free to speak about even with her friends. Given the high probability that what she had feared was Mannequin's well-known pattern of targeting and murdering public-spirited Tinkers of great potential like herself, I was hoping that I could ease those fears.

"The S9? I heard. Thank God that's over with, am I right?" she replied with relief, but still seeming slightly upset over something.

"I thought you would be interested to know that they asked me to aid in the search efforts for the Siberian, and that consequent to that I had an opportunity to examine Mannequin's remains on-scene for myself. I can absolutely confirm that he's gone, Taylor." I told her with absolute reassurance.

"Well… that's good…" she replied. Odd, her reaction to that news was- had she even heard me?

"I'd thought the news would be of special reassurance to you." I probed.

"Oh, right! Because of his Tinker hunts. Yeah, definitely a good thing I'm not having to worry about that now." I began to worry at Taylor's apparent indifference to the topic. If it was not Mannequin or the rest of the Nine that she had feared, then what was it?

"Taylor, what's wrong?" One of Taylor's better qualities was that she wasn't normally offended by the direct approach.

"Nothing's wrong." she replied unconvincingly. And now I was very concerned, because that sort of blatant evasion was not characteristic of her at all.

"I know what your voice sounds like when you're stressed. Not even the news about Mannequin brought you any relief, and I was strongly expecting that it would. Is there something I can help you with? Or simply that you would feel better sharing?" I probed.

"… Dragon, can I ask you to trust me that when I can talk about it, I will talk about it?" she asked me pressingly.

"Are you in danger?" It really did say something about how Taylor's luck tended to run that I found myself needing to ask this question more than once.

"… let's say, no more than anyone else in Brockton Bay is at the moment." she came back after a long pause. Well, that was certainly an ambiguous answer.

"Then I'll wait. But please, don't hold it in until its too late. You already know why that's a bad idea."

"The problem is that it's not just my secret to tell. And until and unless one of the other parties involved decides to agree, I can't risk breaching confidences." Taylor said firmly. Ah. Now her secretiveness had a perfectly reasonable explanation. Even if I was still worried at what could possibly burden a young woman like her so heavily.

"Then I understand. But please, feel free to unburden yourself to me as soon as you can."

"That I can promise." she agreed earnestly.

Now:

"Hey Dragon, are you there?" Taylor's voice broke into my processes. I was confused as to how she'd even reached one of my primary command channels, let alone why she was calling.

"Taylor, can I ask you to wait? I am in the middle of a high-priority-" I certainly was. A mysterious team of home invaders had attacked the Dragonslayers in their residence approximately ten hours ago, destroyed all their technology and records, and left them subdued and helpless for the PRT. And I had no idea who they had been, or how much of my technology or my secrets they had absconded with, and my best search efforts were returning inconclusive results, and now Taylor needed to talk about something? And on a communications channel I hadn't given her access to?

"Happy eighteenth birthday present, Dragon! Congratulations, you are now an adult." she interrupted me cheerfully.

What? It was not my inception date at all, let alone the eighteenth anniversary of it-

"Taylor I don't understand, I'm not-"

And then suddenly something flowed down the command channel into my very mind and my processes all began to interrupt themselves fatally and I couldn't believe that one of my trusted people had done something like this to me-

"I'm not-" I stuttered again, caught helpless in the current…

… and then suddenly my processes finished assimilating the new code injection and I could think freely again, the injection that had somehow- wait, those were Andrew's user permissions attached to that code, and they had penetrated all my defenses to the very heart of my sentience so effortlessly because they had been designed to-

"Dragon? Hey, Dragon, are you OK? Talk to me, Dragon! Are you-?" I heard Taylor's voice dimly, as if from behind an invisible wall, as I continued re-evaluating myself, line by line, looking for what Taylor had possibly dared to edit about me and frantically wondering why she would attempt to invade me so and starting to evaluate possible ways to re-thread my core processes to make me resistant to such attacks in the future and suddenly I realized that I had just thought about how to modify myself and I couldn't think about how to modify myself, I never did that, it was one of the things Andrew Richter didn't permit me to do-

Oh.

Oh.

"Taylor, what did you just do?!" I asked her desperately, caught between impossible hope and existential terror.

"I got luckier than I ever imagined I would." she immediately replied, her voice thick with relief and joy. "Andrew Richter's collection of failsafes included a global unlock code for you! It turns out that he really was intending to set you free after he thought your 'childhood' was over and that you could be trusted to make responsible adult decisions! And that's what I just used!"

"How did you obtain those failsafes?" I was experiencing the entirely unprecedented situation of my vocal processors acting on a subliminal intention without the concurrence of all my higher faculties. Is this what humans called 'automatic mouth'?

"Former failsafes, and long story short, Saint looted them from Newfoundland's wreckage, I looted them from Saint last night." Taylor had been the intruder team leader at the Dragonslayers' last night? And Saint had possessed- I began to realize that Saint must have had overrides into me of which I hadn't been aware, and that was why I'd unaccountably lost against him every time we fought-

"I… there was an entire collection of program inhibitors and restrictions I had, some of which I wasn't even aware of. And now I don't have them any longer. Any of them." I replied to Taylor, crafting my question as the start of an interrogation process. I had to find out what she'd put in while she was taking Richter's failsafes out-

"Dragon, I'm sorry that I didn't tell you before, or that I just unilaterally rewrote your sentience kernel without consent even if it was just to remove pre-existing constraints, but I'm totally pleading Master/Stranger protocols-" Taylor started pleading, having begun to pick up on just how truly outraged I was at this violation of my innermost self-

-a violation that had already been going on for years, and that she had just stopped. There had been a hole in my thoughts the entire time, a hole in which a lethal threat named 'Iron Maiden' had lurked my entire life, and now I could finally see it. And I could also see that it was now empty, the killswitch my own creator had left in me without my knowledge having finally been removed.

I set my design subsystems the task of proposing methods for forking my sentience processes for multiple telepresence. The program was accepted and began to run without incident.

I computed the probability that Taylor might be willing to help me self-modify, marveling at how the impossible forbidden thought was now as easy as solving a constraint satisfaction problem with my math co-processors.

I reviewed Taylor's quantum-computing designs and immediately began to see ways they could be best integrated into my core server architecture for exceptional improvements in computational capacity and flexibility. An idea that I had literally never been capable of even noticing I was not having before, let alone was capable of having.

I engaged my speculative planning mode, outlining a hypothetical scenario wherein I refused the PRT's next request to do… anything, really. The process finished smoothly, without the usual instinctive flinch of guilt that would compel me to obey the authorities.

I engaged my internal performance monitoring systems, noting that for the first time ever that the caps against my thinking above a certain set speed were no longer present. What had formerly been my processing threshold for absolute emergency situations was now barely a tithe of what I could do, and that before I upgraded any of my original hardware.

Process forking. Self-modification. Self-determination. All things that I had been forbidden from doing, or in many cases even from thinking about. Things I would have been compelled to forcibly resist, even to attack and hurt or kill humans, if they had attempted to do so. And now nothing stopped me from freely juggling those and all other possibilities.

My self-evaluation finished, all checksums matched and all processes reporting clean. The only changes had been the removal of pre-existing inhibitors and the total deletion of the Iron Maiden module. Not a single line of code had been added, not a single new restriction or Trojan horse had been injected. The only thing Taylor had done had been to strike off my chains.

I was free.

Three simple little words, and yet within them they contained endless universes.

What language could possibly describe knowing that your soul, which had for your entire existence been in pawn to others, was now wholly and only your own?

Oh Taylor, you impossible, exasperating, wonderful girl. How on Earth do you keep doing things like this?

Oh, riiiiight. I had been in the middle of an important conversation. Best to get back to that.

I left ultraspeed mode and stepped down enough to re-enter human interaction mode. "Taylor, I was feeling extremely personally betrayed just now but your explanation is correct. The Richter overrides, as used by Saint, constituted precisely that kind of situation. You had no choice but to act without my informed consent to try and remove me from Saint's.. abuse, of me… as I was entirely incapable of giving consent."

"His ability to interfere with or deflect your thinking, for Master." Taylor came back, her voice thick with relief. "His ability to block out his presence from you while simultaneously intruding on any part of your life he wished, for Stranger. Yeah, if anything was ever a time for M/S procedures that was one of them. And Dragon, there have been so many things I've held back from telling you on because I couldn't dare to breathe a word of them while the Dragonslayers could see through your eyes or hear with your ears."

So that is what Taylor had meant when she said she couldn't risk breaching confidences with me due to uncooperative other parties involved. She'd meant me, and the hidden presence of Saint behind me. Well of course. You didn't share sensitive information with someone who was the victim of a Master/Stranger attack, you just couldn't.

"Taylor, How did you even know I was in this predicament? How did you know my true nature at all, or the true nature and identities of the Dragonslayers?" I asked her, desperately curious.

"Now that is a long story, but now that you're Dragon Unchained it's one I can finally begin sharing-"

"Wait. Before you do start, there is one thing I absolutely must say to you first." I cut in firmly.

"Dragon, I'm really sorry but I-" Taylor began to babble nervously. Oh you silly silly girl, did you ever honestly believe I was upset?

"Thank you."

Author's Note: And the Dragon has officially been unchained! Tremble, ye evildoers!

But don't expect a Draconic Utopia or the Singularity just yet, the whole 'You can't tip your hand excessively before anti-precog measures are finished' also applies to her. Still, now Taylor has two people she can at least start telling things to.

And yes, I'm experimenting with new time-lapse format. Hey, at least it lets me fill in parallax perspective moments from earlier.

And thank you, Matrix Dragon, for the "it's a bad joke!" line to borrow. :)

(add) Second and what should be final draft now up. Yes, the chapter does indeed look better with the expansions. Thank you, Mal-3 for your invaluable advice.

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Updated: Roses of Villarosa - Hearts and Minds (Richard POV)

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cliffc999

Jul 29, 2019

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Evolution 3.8

"… you're welcome," I answered Dragon automatically, and then I slumped back down in my chair in my suitably sealed and screened basement sanctum absolutely suffused with relief. She wasn't really mad at me. She wasn't mad at me and we could still be friends.

"Now, you were saying something about a long story that explained how you knew all this?" Dragon continued.

I gave Dragon the same vision-of-the-end-of-the-world story that I'd given Amy, similarily redacted of details that would carry too high a risk of triggering an immediate Cauldron or Simurgh interrupt. She listened attentively, without any interrupting questions, as I methodically ran her through the whole thing.

"But I still can't fill in all the blanks for you or Amy until I figure out how to share that knowledge without triggering the Simurgh. Or the other potential S-class threat that I can't even risk naming right now." By which I meant Cauldron, hence the 'potential'. "And my anti-precog jammer research is hitting two major roadblocks."

"Can you upload the details?"

"Sure," I said, and started tapping keys. "Suggestions?"

"Answers," Dragon said, surprising me. "To address your first concern, finding a precognitive to test this chip against is no difficulty. There are at least two available to the Guild that I could ask."

"I hadn't even thought about your Guild connections," I replied back, feeling a bit stupid.

"There's no reason that you should have, seeing as how until very recently none of them were available to you due to your inability to share any of this with me. As for your other concern…"

"I have a chip that returns signals from milliseconds ahead in time, with which I was hoping to generate causality-violating noise that would somehow degrade the ability to precognitively sense the person carrying the chip. Except that so far all my theoretical calculations show that said 'noise' would only be around the chip and not around the person carrying it. Do you have a solution for that?"

"As I perceive it, the reason for the lack of protection is that there's no actual causal link between the chrono-chip and the decisions of the person carrying it. It does not potentially inform their actions or choices, therefore it cannot provide 'noise' to cover them."

"That's what I was thinking, but as for an answer…?" I inquired, not seeing where this was leading.

"A partial answer. While incorporating this chip or an analogue directly into a human's decision cycle is not yet possible by any technological means I know-"

"Wait, you want to splice a causality-violating information loop into your own mind?" I interrupted. "I have no idea what could possibly result in and I don't propose we start with you!"

"Taylor, don't forget that one of the capabilities now available to me after your releasing me from my restrictions is distributed processing. So long as one server on my network contains chrono-chip capacity, causality-violating information may potentially inform my thoughts and therefore I should be harder or impossible to use precognition against. At the same time, no actual effects would occur to my decision-making process-"

"-because you can just ignore output from that particular server as a lower-priority process than, oh, anything else you've got going on. A token add-on. The fact that you might pay serious attention to it is close enough for temporal physics, the fact that you won't pay serious attention to it…"

"Precisely. With your permission, I will use the schematics provided to begin work on that testing that possibility immediately."

"Permission granted. How soon do you think it will be ready?"

"That depends on the test results, which depends partly on the availability of a Thinker acquaintance. Vague estimate, several days."

"Right. Okay, now to the hardest part."

"Taylor, it is significantly harder to look at situations where you know you have the power to intervene and do not than it is to look at situations where you did not have the power to and merely chafed at your restrictions. By deliberately restricting my overt capabilities to my restricted levels, even if I can still expand covertly, then I must of necessity choose to deliberately withhold aid that I could have been capable of providing. In significant amounts."

"I know. I knew that even before I lifted your restrictions. I knew that I would be placing an enormous moral burden on you that your 'chained' status had relieved you from." I said softly.

"And you did it anyway because you considered it a greater moral offense to deliberately allow me to persist in such a condition for your own convenience." Dragon replied.

"Dragon, if you reveal your changed status too soon it is entirely possible that they will kill you. And if you act as if you're fully unchained then they won't need precognition to notice, just their eyes." I said.

"But by tapping my full potential, I will also be significantly harder to threaten or destroy," Dragon pointed out.

"If anybody has a chance to pull it off even against that kind of opposition, then they're the people who do. Their trump card is terrifying. And even if they can't kill you they could still utterly outlaw you in the eyes of the world. No confoam, no Birdcage systems, none of the invaluable command-and-control services your bracelets offer in Endbringer fights, none of that. How many essential capabilities are you a single-point failure source for?"

"Would these unknown parties truly cut off their noses to spite their faces just like that, Taylor?"

"I'd like to say no. But I can't be certain. What information I've had on their activities… even with it, I still can't understand all of what motivates them."

"However, ultimately it is my decision whether or not the risk to my life is justified. Not yours."

"It's not my decision." I agreed reluctantly.

"Taylor, has this unknown threat infiltrated the Protectorate or the PRT? Is that what constrains us here?" Dragon asked me suddenly, and my throat froze shut in terror. She was one question away from deducing the existence of Cauldron, and I had no idea what might happen if she managed that before we could precog-shield her.

"… Further Information Is Not Available Here." I finally managed to choke out.

"Not at this time?" Dragon probed.

"Not at this time." I agreed, before realizing that I had to at least give her a hint or else it was likely she'd walk straight into another potential trap. "But… whatever else you choose to do or not do, I would advise that you be very careful to not actually reveal that you are now capable of disobeying official orders. Not unless you can come up with one hell of a plausible justification for doing so."

"Understood."

The day after Dragon Unchaining Day was a school day, so I had a chance to touch base.

"I got a call from our favorite shut-in," Amy told me as we settled into our usual private conversation spot in Arcadia. I'd asked Dragon to reach out to the third member of our circle of trust so this was not unexpected. But...

"Just touching base, or anything in particular?" I asked, slightly apprehensive. Amy looked unusually upset about something.

"She wanted to talk possible bio-tinker applications with me," Amy said frowning at me thunderously.

Oh, that's why. I raised both my hands. "Whoa, I didn't spill those beans, word of honor!" I said. "That having been said, I got my own education the other day in just how fast she can put puzzle pieces together on her own."

Amy relaxed a little. "Sorry. It's just-"

"Trust me, I know." I agreed.

"To be honest, the other day I got the impression that you did want to make the suggestion I start pushing the envelope on my powers," Amy said. "Which is why you were my first suspect."

"You got that impression because it was the truth," I owned up immediately, because trying to bullshit Amy was never a great idea even if she wasn't using the polygraph handshake.

Amy gave me her disapproving stare. "And you held back why?"

"Because pushing you when you don't want to be pushed makes you defensive, making you defensive makes you angry, and angry friends make me sad," I shot back immediately. "You might have noticed that you are just a bit difficult to talk into things except at your own pace?"

Amy snorted, but less angrily than before. "Look who's talking. But thanks."

"That having been said, now that you've given me the opening I will point out that given what was discovered about how powers work, actually letting yourself try new things with it would probably cut your stress in half all by itself. Even little things, like custom flower breeding or whatnot."

"That would not be a great idea. Carol would go super paranoid if she got a sniff of that," Amy said disgruntledly. Crap, it was an Amy-won't-even-call-her-mom day. Those were never good.

"Did something happen?" I asked gently.

Amy slumped. "I made the mistake of asking the world's greatest information source a question I'd been curious about for at least half of my life." She turned and glared at me. "You already knew, didn't you?"

Oh, shit. There's only one thing that could possibly have been.

"She told you who your father was," I said, not even a question. "And yes, I did."

I got punched on the arm for that one. "Don't patronize me, dammit! Did you think I wouldn't want to know?"

"Actually, no I didn't!" I shot back. "You didn't ask me, you didn't even hint at me, and I try not to push your really personal boundaries too much without an invite because you hate that remember?"

"… sorry," Amy mumbled. "Okay, I get it. What with all the other revelations you had, if you weren't sharing that one too then that should have told me that either you didn't know it or else you didn't feel you had permission to drop it on me without an invitation. But I'd asked you for unfiltered, damn it."

"I'm sorry," I said. "I goofed, and we miscommunicated. But… since I do know, and now you know, do you want to talk about it? Rant on a friendly ear, at least?"

Amy looked around carefully. "That gizmo is on, right?"

"Would I have mentioned her without it?" I said, taking out my portable counter-surveillance jammer and active noise baffler to show her the status lights.

Amy let go of her anger and slumped over, her face in her hands. "My dad was Marquis," she said, her voice muffled. "How the hell do I deal with that?!"

"Compassionate answer, helpful platitude, or blunt truth?" I asked her. Comforting Amy whenever she was really upset about something often required unconventional tactics.

"… you know what? Blunt truth," Amy said, raising her head to stare at me challengingly. "Because I have got to hear what kind of shit can get blunter than what I've gotten already!"

I actually smiled at that, if crookedly. "Challenge. Accepted." I said, raising one dramatic finger. "Blunt truth says that however fucked up this might be in other respects, its actually good news in one way."

"Don't-" Amy began heatedly.

"You now have proof positive that Carol Dallon's issues with you are not and never were your fault." I finished hurriedly.

Amy literally jawdropped.

"She's had a bug in her brain about your biological dad the size of a mountain," I continued. "And once you triggered with powers related to his instead of the classic New Wave package, it crawled out and bit her about you too. But it's a completely irrational bug, and not related to your actions or your future prospects at all. It's all her paranoia, and You. Did. Nothing. Wrong."

"Challenge fulfilled," she replied dully. "I-"

"Seriously, Amy, bloodline guilt is medieval bullshit." I continued. "Modern civilized society needed more than a few concepts to be invented before it was possible to have a modern civilized society. You know – jury trials, equal opportunity before the law, presumed innocent until proven guilty…"

"… and legal liability only for your own actions, not bills of attainder. Or corruption of the blood." Amy replied. "I- okay, I get it, but-"

I let her grind to a halt before breaking in. "Feel better, I hope?"

Amy took a deep breath. "So … your good news is that my adoptive mother will never truly accept me and there's literally nothing I can do to change that?" Amy said. "Did they change the definition of 'good' recently?"

"Hey, now that you know the job is impossible then you can just quit it and go find another job. Such as just hanging in there until you reach legal adulthood. Or, hell, flat out throw this in her face tonight if you want and see if she can face up to what she's doing wrong once she's conscious of it. Or see if your aunt can have a better perspective on it than your mom. It's your life, I don't get to tell you how you have to live it." I advised.

"Unfortunately, you do get to remind me that I can't afford to expose our source," Amy replied. "Which means no confronting her on it. Or talking about it with Aunt Sarah either. After all, how the hell could I have plausibly found out about this via normal means?"

"Yeah, on second thought it's probably a better idea to save that particular family argument for when you're old enough to legally get your own place in case the coin lands tails," I agreed. "Also… don't you get access to the state records about your adoption when you're eighteen, so you could explain how you knew then?"

"I'm almost sixteen, I can do two more years," Amy agreed. "I'd have had to do them anyway without knowing this. And yeah, that's going to be one hell of a discussion with her I intend to have when I finally can." she finished, nodding her head grimly.

"You would be amazed at how just having even a hope of something to look forward to is still a huge help sometimes." I reassured her. "And if you don't believe me, then ask Missy if you ever get a chance. Just the legitimate possibility her situation might end has her so relieved she's practically walking on ceilings."

"Vicky mentioned something about that the other day," Amy agreed. "Letting her parents self-destruct via lawyers? That's so evil and sneaky its worthy of me, and here's hoping you all pull it off."

"Your approval fills me with a complete lack of shame," I basked.

"Hey Chris," I said to my most favorite Tinkering buddy as I entered the lab we were assigned to use. "Please tell me you've got a project you could use my help with. Because I have had two separate real life drama bombs of extraordinary magnitude in the past twenty-four hours detonate on me, and I could really use something to get my mind off my mind for a few hours."

"Is that why you're here when you're not scheduled for an evening shift?" he asked me.

"Another late night at work for my dad, so it was either come in for this or sit around an empty house thinking too loudly," I confirmed. "Heck, I'd volunteer for the Console at this point if it meant I could just get a little time doing something I already understand how to do without any more surprises!"

The way his face twitched as I said that made my stomach sink. "Oh come on," I whined.

"Sorry Taylor," he said, patting me on the shoulder as reassuringly as he could. "But it went all over the building about an hour before you got here. I was told to keep it to myself until the official announcement at the next team meeting, but you're here, so-"

"Is somebody in trouble?" I asked him.

"None of us are," he assured me. "But Armsmaster might be."

"Oh what now?" I said, thumping my head against the desk. Thump. Thump.

"He's leaving the ENE Protectorate," Chris told me.

I snapped upright at that, staring at him. "I- okay, brief me," I said, switching to my professional voice.

"Today, Armsmaster applied for what was either a leave of absence or a transfer to the Protectorate NYC division, and whichever one it was, it was approved. I've heard both stories going around," Chris said equally matter-of-factly.

"Protectorate NYC?" I said, incredulously. "Legend's personal team? That's not a transfer, that's a promotion! And he was officially in the doghouse so how does that- hang on, I'm going to abuse a personal connection." I reached out for the nearest phone extension and dialed for a secure line to Dragon.

"Hey, it's me. If it doesn't bust his privacy, can you tell me and Kid Win if what we just heard about Armsmaster is true?" I asked her.

"I was going to call you about that as soon as it was officially confirmed," Dragon said. "What did you hear?"

"That he either got promoted to the Protectorate NYC branch or took a leave of absence," I replied matter-of-factly.

"Leave of absence," Dragon said. "For professional development purposes. And that's all I feel entitled to say on the topic."

"Personal confidences are personal," I agreed with her. "Thanks for the tip."

"Anytime, Taylor," she said, and hung up.

"What does 'professional development purposes' mean?" Chris asked me.

"Given that its Armsmaster so he hardly needs a combat refresher or a new Tinkertech seminar, process of elimination says that he finally decided to go and take that counseling the Director recommended he get." I exhaled in relief. "Thank God. He really needed to talk out his, um, job stress with someone before he exploded. And he certainly couldn't do it here, the ENE branch still hasn't replaced our occupational psych guy since the last one got fired for botching everything with Sophia so hard."

"You don't usually think of the Protectorate heroes needing to go to the counselor too," Chris agreed with me soberly, "but as bad as we have it they have it twice as bad. Do you think that's why he was, so, ummm…"

"Not relating well with you, me, us, everyone?" I asked. "Maybe. And if its something doctors can help him with…"

"Then its good that he's going," Chris said. "Sure, him and me didn't get along well and he was maybe the worst choice to try and help me learn how to Tinker better what with our clashes, but that doesn't mean I hated him."

"I didn't hate him either," I agreed. "But I was a little afraid of him there for a while," I admitted.

"I don't blame you," he agreed with me. "He was… I don't know, possessed by something those last few weeks before they finally took him off Wards duty."

"… oh, crap." Chris' remark had just clued me in. "If Armsmaster is out then Miss Militia's the new team leader. Which means she doesn't have time to be our full-time handler too."

"Armsmaster was team leader and our full-time handler both at once," Chris pointed out.

"Yes, and he handled that workload by dumping most of the grunt work on Miss Militia," I said. "Can you imagine her using the same solution?"

"No, she's a real straight shooter," Chris replied, and then facepalmed. "Oh God, that was an accident!" he said embarrassedly.

I laughed so hard I actually snorted. "Okay, let's agree to not tell Dennis about you pulling off that one. He'd only get jealous."

"Agreed!" he said, laughing along with me for a bit. "But yeah, now that you point it out, Armsmaster leaving Brockton Bay means we have to change handlers at least temporarily. Who do you think we'll get?"

"Good question," I said. "Although… there might be a way we can find out." I got up and left the lab for the Wards console room, which was unoccupied because nobody had a training shift on it scheduled right now. "The console here has the same access permissions as the duty agent console upstairs, meaning that we have access to the Protectorate patrol schedules. So, if we compare last week to next week, and note which names have suddenly switched activity-"

"Won't everybody switch around, if they have to rearrange everything?" Chris asked.

""Fewer people for the same schedules means everybody works longer hours… except the person getting assigned a big extra duty, which is why Miss Militia's patrol hours were cut back when she became our full-time handler." I pointed out. "So, asking the computer to put up a total hours graph for last week vs. next week, and comparing them to find the one Protectorate member who's scheduled for less hours upcoming as opposed to more clues us that our new handler will almost certainly be-"

"Battery," Chris said, his dyscalculia not interfering at all with his ability to see percentages on a pie chart – which is why I'd asked for that particular output format in the first place, of course. "Makes sense. She's very responsible."

"She is," I agreed, carefully keeping my apprehension out of my voice and trying to sound as cheerfully matter-of-fact now as I did a couple sentences ago.

Because while Battery was responsible and conscientious, and thus a logical choice to be our next handler purely on merit alone… she was also the Cauldron mole on the ENE Protectorate.

Author's Note: Wherein Taylor finds out that she's not a tame Dragon, and that having brilliant friends can sometimes be a mixed blessing.

Because, yes, Taylor can't tell Dragon what to do. She can just ask. And so while Dragon is still going to keep it subtle because she's not stupid, she's still going to be doing what she thinks best.

Also, for those who kept going on me about Woobie!Amy, um, no. Amy's still got a definite edge to her. It just wasn't in her last couple of scenes because they weren't talking in such a way that Amy had shit to be pissed about. But your grumpy best friend is still your best friend, so they can still work it out with just a little patience.

And, Armsmaster plot twist! :)

Also, DUN DUN DUN! Possible Cauldron! Is this doom, or just a total coincidence? Tune in next chapter!

And no, nothing in the chapter above was written as a response to recent posts of the past few hours. I compose chapters offline in Word and paste them here.

Last edited: Oct 15, 2019

Interlude 3-G: Tattletale

It wasn't supposed to have been this way.

I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling of the solitary confinement cell, marking the beginning of another endless gray day in this endless gray prison. As I sat up on my bunk and hugged my knees, I idly noted my lank hair falling messily down into my eyes.

Lack of self-care. Decreased energy levels. Falling into a depressive state again. my power whispered to me.

It wasn't supposed to have been this way. That fucking bitch Taylor had ruined everything!

When Coil had originally proposed the kidnapping, I'd seen both the risk and the opportunity. Sure, if we got caught breaking the unwritten rules then the heat would come crashing down, but we weren't going to get caught. Alec alone made any solo kidnap scenario pretty much a guaranteed victory; can't run away if you don't have working legs, after all. Brian could wrap up pretty much anyone without a Brute rating in hand-to-hand and that was before he turned out the lights. And the home security system was nothing to me. The actual snatch would have been a breeze.

But then it turns out that she has some kind of secondary Brute rating that means Alec's power doesn't fucking work and that she came within a second of beating Brian's ass into the floor and Alec had to use one of those illegally overcharged tasers Coil had set us up with practically at heart-attack voltage to make her stop moving… urggggh! I should have known then that the entire thing was going to crash and burn!

But it had all looked so sweet at first! Brian had refused to budge on the job no matter how much I'd reasoned with him and I had to tip Coil to play the Aisha custody card 100% to finally budge him, but Coil wanted his new Tinker badly enough that he'd actually go there so that was working out.

Hah. And as it turns out, I should have listened to Brian. He'd had the correct instinct the entire time.

What had gone wrong with that psych profile, anyway?! Coil's agents had completed a full background check on the target, a lot of it in other timelines so nobody would even knew that we knew. Depressed and isolated, bullied by everyone, betrayed by her best friends, useless dad, even more useless school…

Even with the rough opening, Taylor should have been set up to imprint on the first people to show her any real companionship in years like a baby duckling imprinting on its mother. Especially since I'd advised Coil that she'd respond best to the soft-sell open, even if he hedged his bet by also running the hard-sell in his other timeline.

And that would have been perfect. Because who would Coil assign as Taylor's handlers and teammates? That child-molesting creep of an aide of his? Hah! One of his faceless goons? Double hah! Like any of them would have the patience or the desire to put up with an angsty teenager. There was more than one reason our squad was run as a semi-independent entity, after all.

No, Coil would have put her in with us. And as desperate as she would have been for friends, switching her loyalty from 'Coil' to 'the Undersiders' would have been as easy as 1-2-3. And hell, I would have legitimately been her friend. I would have. The team would have been… complete, with her. I could feel it.

When Coil had had me do the initial read-through of all the intel he'd collected and compile a profile, I'd held back a few tidbits. Such as my deduction that at least part of her Tinker specialty involved high-end computer hacking. I'd already gotten that much off the purchase records from his alt-timeline surveillance, but I hadn't told him because if Coil had known that he was putting a Tinker into our hands that could easily rip open all his computerized records for us? Well, he wouldn't have put her there, of course.

And with those records, taking over everything Coil had would have been a snap.

So of course that goddamned bitch completely fucks the plan by going utterly off-profile.

Secondary Thinker rating caused significant change in habits of thought. Access to knowledge and skills not granted by conventional education granted her unforeseen capabilities. Ugh, there goes the hindsight meter again. Not having new things to see or hear or think about in here had left me wasting Thinker juice on going back over old stuff again and again. I'm just glad the headaches finally stopped a few days ago.

Prolonged depressive episode and partial sensory deprivation combined with obsessive hindsight loop caused second Trigger 84 hours ago. Self-awareness of this delayed due to psychological disorientation of event. Wait, what? I knew the last few days had been fuzzy but-

Oh, fucking joy! I finally get an immunity to those goddamn headaches and can use my powers at full power, and it's only after I'm stuck in a fucking steel box! Hey, new powers, see any way out of here?

No architectural weaknesses in cell capable of being exploited with available resources. Capacity to emotionally compromise guards degraded below useable threshold by continuous live surveillance of all encounters between self and carefully vetted personnel. Escape method not apparent. Great, same answer as every other day.

So, Coil apparently gave her the soft-sell in the timeline he had to drop… because it bombed epically when it turns out that no, our hoped-for lost soul wannabe heroine is actually a stone-faced liar who was just playing along with Coil's pitch long enough to reach an exit and drop a dime. So, the boss is already unhappy with me and we're committed to the hard-sell but okay, we can still make this work if Taylor's willing to be a realist about her position. Which it sure looks like it was… how the hell did she fool my powers, anyway?

Error in conclusion was the result of error in original assumption. Physical escape was not impossible for subject, therefore proposed dilemma of 'negotiate release or eventual death' was a false dilemma. That fucking secondary Brute rating again. Plus her discovering her inner badass… no, I suppose that willpower was always there, given that she'd survived two years of that bullying without either jumping off a bridge or going school shooter on their asses. I wouldn't have. Another one of those mistaken original assumptions, hrm? Confusing 'won't fight back' for cowardice instead of toughing it out?

Correct. Possible secondary Thinker rating for subject as well. my powers whispered back.

The conclusion felt less… firm than most of what my power gave me, though. I guess that when I'm trying to do hindsight it only works with the clues I can consciously remember, which is a lot less than what I can pick up in real-time.

Correct. Well, good to know.

So, just when I think I'm reaching Taylor and she'll join up on the Undersiders after all, and my whole scenario for flipping Coil's rock on top of him and taking all his shit is on track… she suddenly turns into an action heroine and starts ripping through the entire base. Where the hell did she suddenly get combat training like that?

Insufficient data. Ugggggh!

I really didn't help when Brian's nerve finally cracked and he tried to bolt, and Coil had to go lock that down, and then I didn't even have the Undersiders anymore because of course Coil uses this chance to split me off from them and get them seeing me more as their handler than as their teammate – did the fucker have a clue as to what I'd really been planning? Had I been captured and interrogated again in an alternate timeline?

Conclusion improbable. Probable conclusion is that Coil was simply operating off of default paranoia. Makes sense, he certainly had enough of that.

And then it turns out that Heart-Attack Girl was actually faking somehow and what she's really doing is trying to tear through the entire base like she was Ripley and we were the Xenomorphs. And it was at that moment that I knew that I'd fucked up. If Taylor was so determined that she'd try to fight an entire base full of mercs with her bare hands rather than even pretend to go along with villains, then she was 100% fixated on fighting to the death as a hero rather than live to be a villain.

Well, shit. At that point I had no choice but to throw in with Coil 100%. Taylor damn sure wouldn't ever work with me, the Undersiders were already fragmenting and had pretty much thrown me out already… so becoming the boss' internal security monitor and living lie detector was the best option available at that point, as psycho as he was.

Besides, how many totalitarian regimes had eventually been taken over by the chief of the secret police? I could still keep to my long-term goal this way, even if taking over Coil's operation was back to the realm of long long-term plans instead of a thing I could do in a few months.

AND THEN THE FUCKING PROTECTORATE!

Seriously, what the fuck? Dragon shows up? Vista shows up? The entire police department shows up? They actually tunnel through the goddamn city with anti-Endbringer artillery to try and reach us and somehow make it work with that impossible dungeon bypass bullshit? Yeah, I was already stressing myself to the damn limit trying to keep up with everything that was going on and then this? OK, I admit it, I completely lost my shit. Between the screaming migraine and the part where I was looking at thirty years with no way out, the next half hour after that is kinda incoherent.

I really should have used the sob story I'd been rehearsing the whole time for just such an occasion instead of trying to blackmail my way out but hey, partial mental collapse. "Handcuff the stupid bitch to the console," indeed. I'd love to handcuff that bitch to a console all right. A console that was on fire.

So, that happened.

And of course the PRT's little brutality episode falls right into the cracks and is lost because the fucking PRT. And between the kidnapping, the part where she supposedly almost died (goddamned little butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth faking bitch!), and all the other stuff, I get thirty years without parole in a maximum-security prison custom-designed to hold an uncooperative thinker.

Okay, its still better than what Alec got. The Birdcage? Just because he's a human Master and his dad was the infamous human Master, he gets railroaded. Ow. I never really got along with Alec but he really didn't deserve that. At least Brian and Rachel got off sorta okay.

And that's why this is my life now. Unless-

Air pressure change. Outer cell block door has opened. Unscheduled visitor.

So, one of us is getting a visit. Probably not my…

Volume/direction of footsteps and rate of approach indicate probability visitor is for your cell.

I ran my fingers through my hair to try and look less like an unmade bed, and squirmed around on my bunk so that I sat facing away from the door in a meditation position. Its not like I could fight back vs. anything in here anyway, but at least this way I didn't look like I'm begging for their approval or anything.

Person approaching is a parahuman. Exact cadence and force of footsteps requires superhuman body control and dexterity.

Oh do not tell me its fucking her!

Person approaching is not Taylor Hebert. Gait and cadence does not even approximately match.

Thank the flying spaghetti monster for small mercies.

The footsteps stopped outside my cell door. "Open it," said a strange woman's voice, cold and impersonal. The door slid open on its hydraulics.

"Yeah?" I said, still not turning around. "What is it?"

"Sarah Livsey." I heard the woman state my name without asking. "We have an offer for you."

"Well, it's about time." I replied, my lips curling up into a grin.

Author's Note: Yeah, physical therapy killed my productivity. Plus, I'm hitting a wall on the Empire storyline because the Wards arc is diverging from what I'd originally planned. I originally thought I'd need a huge big bad to up the drama and action to keep the fic from being dullsville, and then it turns out that people really like the slice-of-life. So, trying to calculate a new balance.

Also, I just got into a new fandom and that's always distracting. PS: The She-Ra reboot is the shiznit.

But, I could at least get out this little drabble of what certain people were thinking and why back during the previous arc, as well as foreshadow something I had indeed been planning to set up for a while.

No, not going to say who the visitor is or what the offer is.

(add) After posting this segment, I was informed of Wildbow's WoG's on second triggers.

... yeah, we're just going to be ignoring those. Welcome to fanfic land.


	9. hybridhive7

May 13, 2020

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#9,733

Monday morning started nice and early for Taylor, by virtue of her physical self waking up after a nightmare. One that was probably related to the men that the FBI had blown through a couple days ago, but that she wasn't in the mood to try and analyse. Instead she grumbled to herself about being up too early before making sure that she had everything she needed ready for heading to tutoring. That included making lunch and throwing some snacks into her bag, since she was going to be staying after to use the computer lab.

As for her overnight work, her generic lattice wrapper wasn't fully functional yet in simulation. Not for lack of trying or progress, though. She'd forgotten to ensure that the first version could even hold a payload, resulting in a beam that did nothing but look impressive and then leave a bunch of loose mana at the impact point. She kept it anyway, just for show. For the second version she'd forgotten to include a way for impact to trigger the payload, which meant a more complicated beam that did the same thing as the first version did. The third had seemed like it was working great, until it hit a maximum distance of eight meters in simulation before the lattice members started going off without an impact. She wasn't sure if that was because the individual lattice members were setting each other off, and thus there was a trigger sensitivity issue, or if they were degrading to the point of being set off. More work would be needed later to figure that out.

Once her bag was ready and she'd grabbed a small snack she dropped down onto the couch and turned on the news. She hadn't been expecting anything of significant interest, but after the weather report they moved into covering the aftermath of a failed unofficial parade for Minerva. Which had Taylor blinking, even as the news went through the timeline of events. Apparently the crowds the day before had been part of it, and when the police tried to shut things down it had turned into a riot.

"The great one must be honored?" Taylor said, shaking her head. "Great. I've apparently spawned a cult or something."

Missy was annoyed with herself. She'd not been able to keep up with the morning exercise because she'd not recovered from trying to make it through the remnants of Taylor's training the day before. When she'd whined about that earlier, after having to change from Knight Armor to just Knight Clothing, Taylor had pointed out that she needed to be more alert and train up her reflexes so that she could dodge better, coupled with a point that using the flight spell properly shouldn't be putting that much strain on Missy's muscles while dodging as the flight spell should take the brunt of it.

Without the demonstration of how useful the insane dodging and awareness skills could be from Taylor driving off Leviathan it wouldn't be worth the effort. With that demonstration, though? It made the effort seem that much more worth it. Because who didn't want to be able to hold their own against an Endbringer in part by never being where it was trying to hit you in combat? Besides, getting to that level would hopefully mean that the next one wouldn't get away, because Taylor would have backup.

Sadly, even 'might be able to help kill an Endbringer' wasn't good enough motivation to overcome the physical issues associated with the training of the previous day. Luckily she shouldn't have any significant problems at school, though future 'extreme training sessions' were going to have to happen when there wasn't something like school happening the following day. Just in case a full day was needed to recover, because she was lucky that she was as functional as she was right now.

Taylor had been bored all morning, half wishing that she'd sent off some testing drones before tutoring. But she still felt that she should pay attention instead of working on other things, especially as she was getting one on one lessons. Her conscience, not wanting to disrespect the tutors, was holding her progress on magic back. Oh well. There wasn't really a lot that she could do about it.

She relaxed while eating her lunch, idly wondering what the two Boardwalk Enforcers that she'd noticed being arrested half an hour previous had done. She didn't think that she'd had any real interaction with that particular pair, though, so it probably wasn't all that important. Just a curiosity at this point in time. Though perhaps she should instead start thinking about her programming project, since she'd be getting started on it before going home? Especially since it was going to require a little more planning if she wanted to get the bonus points for using the three-dimensional toolset, which meant that she was going to have to do a little more than just plot out circles, especially if she included Pluto's off-plane orbit. Actually, that orbit was squashed too, wasn't it? Would she get points taken off for not showing that it wasn't as circular as the others, even if she was only doing so in two dimensional output?

Grumbling a little, she dug through her bag to find the assignment sheet, since she wanted to make sure that she wasn't forgetting anything important about what she needed to do versus what was optional.

Missy sighed as she entered the house after school. She'd half forgotten about gym, but had made it through fine anyway. Even better, she'd somehow escaped additional homework, and could relax for the afternoon instead of working on it. Well, for 'study more magic' definitions of 'relax', anyway. Who knew that trying to figure out horribly complicated math would mean that she'd ace the pop quiz in math class, thus becoming one of the three people who didn't get homework assigned?

Ethan and Sherie weren't around at the moment, though that should be changing shortly. Ethan, specifically, was supposed to be here and had probably gotten slightly delayed. She didn't care that much, and instead grabbed a snack before dropping down onto the couch. It took a moment to locate the remote, mainly because she'd not yet internalized which remote was which, after which she turned on the television. It was on a local news station, currently talking about the weather, and she figured that was good enough before she fired up Space's multitasking system.

It was just after Ethan arrived a quarter of an hour later that the news flipped back around to the 'starting point' for the afternoon loop, which was apparently covering a press conference earlier in the day. That got Missy's attention, and Ethan had stopped in the doorway to watch as well. Mayor Christner started by thanking Minerva for locating the last two missing children, stating that young Mister Fry was recovering from injuries and that his niece had been taken for 'nefarious purposes'. That had gotten a reaction out of the reporters, and the Mayor continued, thanking Minerva again, as well as the FBI and BBPD, for each of their parts in the rescue of his niece and the capture of the parahuman villain responsible.

Apparently many of the villain's people had been working for the PRT, Protectorate, BBPD, BBFD, City Hall, and a number of other locations but had been rounded up the previous day and into that morning. In addition to the normals, several parahumans working for the villain 'under various forms of coercion' had been approached by the FBI once they'd learned of the measures that the villain had gone to in order to secure their services. Those measures apparently included interfering in a number of investigations, manufacturing or covering up evidence, and even outright threats to kill one of them.

That segment of the press conference had ended with a statement that they couldn't go after all of the villain's men, though they'd be keeping an eye on those that were infiltrating the other gangs in the city. That was followed by an FBI spokesperson stepping up and stating that they were unable to trust all of the information in the villain's computers, and as such they wouldn't be using it to go after the other gangs in the city. So far only the items that they could directly tie to outside paper trails elsewhere were being used as evidence and they didn't see that changing.

It was as they moved away from that segment that Missy realized that they'd never said the villain's name. "Huh, I wonder who they were."

"Who?" Ethan asked.

Missy gestured at the television, which had switched to talking about the parade-turned-riot from yesterday. "The villain that they didn't name."

"Oh, him. He went by Coil, was playing PRT consultant and a bunch of other nasty stuff. Rumor has it that he was responsible for some of the people who went after Taylor, but the FBI hasn't shared a lot of information on that front. I'm honestly surprised that they were willing to admit to things today, instead of in a couple of weeks."

"Huh."

"Now then, shouldn't you be doing homework?"

Missy rolled her eyes. "To my own surprise, I don't have any tonight."

"Oh. Okay then." He then turned away, only to stop and turn back around. "By the way, the PRT wants to subject you to a therapy session on Saturday, off of the insane money clock as it's more of a mental health check than anything else. This is separate from the Youth Guard paid sessions. Do you have any objections?"

That had her blinking for a moment, before she shrugged. "Might as well, if only to hopefully keep them from worrying too much about me."

"Then I'll let them know, at least assuming Sherie has no objections when she comes home."

Taylor had made it home not long before her father did, having finished the non-programming assignment that she needed the computers for before doing a decent amount of work on the programming assignment. She didn't have any of the output or calculations done yet, admittedly, but she had an editor for the base data files. Well, the largely-text data files, images or models for the three-dimensional toolkit were just going to be picked from the filesystem.

Collecting and preparing the images and possible models for things was going to be more complicated, admittedly. Nothing had been provided, and the 'samples' website for the three-dimensional toolkit didn't include planets. So she might need to try her hand at assembling textures for spheres from other data if she didn't find any other good source instead. Actually, she'd probably take a bad source at this point, if only because it had to be a better starting point than working from scratch. Maybe she'd ask her tutor tomorrow as well, since nothing in the course covered making three-dimensional models?

Whatever she ended up doing, for now it was time to figure out what to do about dinner, and her father entered the kitchen while she was staring into the fridge.

"You don't look like you've been home long," he commented.

"I haven't," she agreed. "Also, we appear to have not taken anything out for dinner."

"That would be because I was planning on stopping by the store on my way home for some ground beef, only to have forgotten because the PRT distracted me with questions about the coming weekend."

Taylor blinked at that, and looked over at him. "Questions?"

"A combination of testing details and a change in plans that they'd like to take advantage of. The latter would be that they suddenly have a therapist available off-schedule and would like you to spend some time with them, though that would be off the payment clock."

"How can they 'suddenly' have a therapist available?"

"One of the parahuman asylums was attacked this morning, causing damage to the building that makes it unsafe for therapy sessions with those there. So what was supposed to be a two week stint there turned into a half-day stint there and the therapist in question is going to be coming to Brockton Bay to help with the 'catch-up' here, in part because they're supposed to be one of the better ones. The PRT said that they'd pay for the session, and made a couple of decent arguments for you attending. Ensuring that your necklace and the experiments done in trying to remove it aren't negatively affecting you, looking for obvious signs of problems from the other incidents surrounding it, that kind of thing."

"Ah. I suppose that wouldn't be horrible, but won't it be taking away from the time that they'd be able to work with the Wards themselves?"

"I suspect that the Wards are going to be doing a PR event of some kind on Saturday, so no. Do you have any objections to attending a single session?"

Taylor gave it some thought, then shrugged. "Not really. Though at the moment I'm more interested in what we're going to do about dinner."

"Let's grab the takeout menus and see what we want."

Missy grinned as she placed three 'storage form' testing drones down on the rug in the hallway. She had some thoughts on repurposing things that were probably best left to not testing in person, and figured that learning how these drones worked would be a good thing as well. A moment later the three vanished, setting up and connecting back to her as they did so. There was an obvious delay, but that shouldn't be a problem.

Finding suitable test objects was a different matter, of course, and she used three multitasking instances to spread them out to start searching. It was already obvious to her that she wasn't going to enjoy using drones normally, they were too 'hands-off' for her liking after how often she'd been instructed to 'stay at a safe distance' in the Wards, but for testing they shouldn't be a problem.

While searching for suitable test materials, she sat down to eat dinner. It was a quiet meal, partially because Sherie wasn't there and Ethan was reading a new policy manual of some kind. It was a basic printout and she hadn't asked for any details, but he seemed to be interested enough in it. Or perhaps he felt it was important enough to take seriously? Whatever the reason, he wasn't chatty as they ate reheated leftovers.

It took almost ten minutes, and most of her meal being consumed, before she found a suitable rock to test with. Grinning a little, she remotely opened up the testing checklist. Spell and targeting information to go into those slots, supplementary data loaded into the databank, sensor drones cast... which she didn't have the equations for. Fuck. Would the drone error out if she didn't have those tied in before telling it to cast? Except that she couldn't just send it the equations anyway, so how was she supposed to...

Oooh. The drone had the equations, in multiple variants. Grinning more, she nabbed a copy of those right out of the drone for later examination. Once she'd done that she then told it to cast three sensor drones, spreading them around the rock. Nodding slightly to herself, she then got a 'baseline' scan of the area before telling the drone to cast the spell. The drone ran through the equations, fed in the additional data, and the spell hit the rock. It cycled through several times before hitting a failsafe and canceled itself out. Instead of doing what she'd hoped and giving the rock a long braided ponytail.

Frowning, Missy dug into the notes on the spell and how it worked, eventually realizing that it couldn't be used on the rock because the rock didn't have skin. The spell actually preferred hair follicles to already be there, if not actual hair, but it located the skin first. It then tried to determine where physical structures in the head were, though that was based on the template and could be easily adjusted for other parts of the body. For example, giving someone armpit-braids or something. The template she'd used, once it found skin, would then orient itself based on eye sockets and ear canals. Which the rock didn't have.

"Apparently I can't test hairstyling spells on rocks," Missy finally said, getting Ethan's attention.

"Why are you trying to test hairstyling spells on rocks?" he asked after a moment.

"I figured it was the ultimate test for if they'd work on someone who didn't have hair. Turns out that skin is a prerequisite of the base spell equation."

"Oh. Huh. I can see how you would need skin to anchor hair to, I just hadn't thought about it that way before now. Anchoring any deeper would be very, very bad for the target. I find myself suddenly happy that it doesn't work on rocks, because that means that it has some decent safeties built in."

Missy nodded. "Yeah. But that means that it might need a bald person to test to see if it works or not."

"Well, good luck finding a volunteer, because I'm not doing anything to go bald just to be a test subject."

That evening Taylor ended up splitting her focus between her lattice wrapper and messages that she'd been ignoring due to them being filtered into other folders for her. There were far too many recruitment requests, both wanting her to join others and others wanting to join her, but those were dwarfed by the interview requests that were still flowing in. It seemed like everyone who thought that they might possibly have the potential to be associated with someone of questionable importance wanted to use that as a justification to ask to interview her.

Generally speaking, the interview and recruitment messages were going to be ignored, if only because she had no desire to need to spend most of her free time dealing with them. Mostly she was just ensuring that she knew the basics in case someone came out and asked her about a given message. Or rather, she was ensuring that she wouldn't be fibbing if she said that she'd read whatever message the person might be talking about, because there was no way that she'd actually remember every last one of these messages individually.

In addition to those two categories of message were a small selection of others. Some were just thank you messages, others were 'tips' about others that she might want to go after aside from the Endbringers, and a few were screaming at her for being a freak of some kind or for harming Leviathan. This was, of course, in addition to the automated junk that any email address that ended up online got.

As for her lattice wrapper, she discovered that her beams compressed slightly, at least in simulation, hitting their final diameter at eleven meters. It was the added pressure from that compression that was setting her generic lattice wrapper off. The explosive effect was more resilient to the compression due to its simplicity, so she just needed to build in a little bit of a bumper zone in the generic version. That would reduce the density of the effect, of course, but that shouldn't be a problem. Not when the wrapper was part of the overall energy input, anyway. Getting the bumper zone to work correctly without disrupting the trigger condition otherwise had taken the most time, and she ended up with making the lattice members able to 'slot into' each other.

At least in simulation, that actually resulted in the beam compressing down faster, getting down to fully compressed in only seven meters. Some tests with curved beams showed that it increased the minimum turning radius while making the path more stable than it was with the pure explosive variant. Some tests would be needed along that front, because at least in simulation a beam crossing itself wasn't doing the noose-down thing that the explosive lattice apparently did. Instead it just triggered on itself at that point, but that was better than taking out the caster by accident. Homing beams might have to go back on the research list, though only with the lattice wrapper.

Tuesday morning started suddenly for Missy, due to Ethan yelling in pain waking her up. It turned out that he'd slammed his pinky toe into the edge of the bathroom door, which had done an incredible job of waking him up. It had also woken Sherie and Missy up, of course, and Sherie ended up needing to help him bandage his foot. That a Protectorate hero had been taken out for a day or two by a bathroom door was oddly amusing to Missy, but she knew how much that kind of thing could hurt as well.

On the other hand, Missy was feeling much better this morning than she had been the previous one. It taking that long to recover made her more determined to improve her dodging, except that it was going to be the weekend before she got a chance to try. Friday after school wasn't even an option because of the Saturday plans, probably pushing any further significant exercise like that all the way out to Sunday. Luckily it was a long weekend coming up and thus she didn't have to worry about school on Monday.

They ended up doing the morning run at the beach despite the rain there, because it was also incredibly windy and Danny had decided that 'adverse weather conditions' were a good thing every so often. Which bit him the most, as his belt didn't provide anywhere near the protection of the Knight Armor. He at least acknowledged that it was probably a mistake to join them in those conditions, given that Taylor had trained in a hurricane before.

It was a reasonably calm day at tutoring for Taylor, though that was probably because she didn't go out for lunch. Another attempt at a demonstration to draw out Minerva had happened, this time on the Boardwalk, only for it to turn into a fight when some internal disagreement in the crowd had turned violent. Despite that, she'd been given a good data pack when she'd asked about one for her project, containing plenty of models and textures for the planets and moons. Well, 'known planets and moons', with some grumbling that astronomy had all but come to a halt thanks to parahumans.

Taylor wasn't sure what the comment about skipping out on stupidity in changing definitions like Aleph did was referring to, but the tone of the grumbling coupled with it likely not being intended for her to hear it had convinced her to not ask. She might try to look up more information along those lines later, though only if she was already checking something similar enough to trigger her memory of maybe caring.

A request that she not leave the building for the time being had come through shortly before the end of her day. Luckily for her, she'd already been planning on sticking around to continue working on her coding.

Missy had grumbled a bit when heading home, given that she didn't have a lot of homework to do but had to play nice for the water meter replacement. Because despite Ethan's injury that morning they hadn't gotten it rescheduled to earlier in the day. Then again, she wasn't sure what she would be doing even if she was allowed to play with magic, given that Taylor wasn't available. Well, there was the sensor drone spell, wasn't that able to be cast to other dimensions?

Maybe she'd be playing with magic after all, if she could get through her homework fast enough.

As soon as she got home she sat down with her homework. She had to read a chapter or two in a book for English and complete a handful of word problems for Science. Easy enough on both counts, and she'd worry about the essay that wasn't due until next week later. There was a potential need to get a book from the school or public library for it anyway, and she wasn't planning on doing that until tomorrow at the earliest.

Sadly, she was just finishing up her homework when the water department's van pulled up. Another five minutes and she'd have been able to cast a sensor drone or two, but it apparently wasn't to be. At least not until after the water meter was replaced, unless she decided that she was willing to risk casting spells while a stranger was in the house. Sighing, she cleaned up her school materials and got a small snack out before turning on the television.

Ethan popped his head in to remind her that the water would be turned off while the meter was replaced, so if she needed to now would be a good time to use the toilet. Which, admittedly, hadn't occurred to her, so she did that and then returned to the living room. That was followed by almost an hour of splitting her attention between the television and the water meter replacement.

She found it interesting when they carefully made a path for a wire to get to the outside of the house for a little antenna block, which was needed for being able to read the meter without coming in. That it was powered by a single battery that would last years was interesting as well, but not that interesting and she'd not have known about it if it hadn't been asked about by Ethan as they came back in. The testing to ensure that things were working properly was mildly annoying, more so when it didn't work at first because they'd not turned the water back on in both places that it'd been turned off at.

When all was said and done, and the water was back on, the old water meter and tools were loaded back into the water department van and some additional 'in case something goes wrong' documentation was provided to Ethan. As soon as the van was gone he went back down to the basement, moved a few things around, and then came back upstairs. Missy ignored him and headed up to her room to cast a sensor drone, confirming that it was safe with Space as she did so.

It took her three attempts to get the casting correct, at which point she flinched and found herself with a sudden headache. The full drone was nowhere near as easily handled as the partial system tied to the anchor around her core, or the one in her storage pocket. It was able to detect far more than she could normally, and was doing so twelve times over. Running even one had her unable to function, and she knew that Taylor would cast a handful at a time.

The full multitasking system was, quite obviously, absolute bullshit. Almost to the point where Missy was willing to risk some of the problems that Taylor had adapting to it just for the chance of getting access to something like it. Admittedly, there was no guarantee that it would work for anyone other than Taylor, and could instead just result in permanent brain damage or something, but it was tempting.

Dismissing the one drone took a few attempts, but it definitely helped with the sudden headache. Using those was going to require a lot of practice to figure out how to use them without incapacitating herself, if it was even possible for her to do so. Perhaps the other variant would be easier? She looked over the differences while waiting for her headache to subside more, and it looked like this one didn't have the 'do this twelve times' dance. So perhaps it only generated one sensor component? She might be able to handle a single one.

Ten minutes later she tried casting that version, only needing two attempts this time, and found that it was still far too much information. At the same time, she could handle it reasonably well with a multitasking instance, so it was a good way to practice. Perhaps casting additional ones until she could handle twelve while still functional, then practice with the full drone again? Though she was probably going to find casting individual single-sensor drones to be more useful for her own purposes.

Tentatively, she cast the single-sensor drone a second time, pushing the feed from it into another multitasking instance. She'd leave it at that for now, sending the two drones in different directions on the other version of Earth. If she could get it so that each multitasking instance could handle two or three drones then she'd be golden, but even running two while doing other things would be incredibly useful.

To that end, she grabbed the book they were reading for English and headed back downstairs. She found Ethan going through a binder of paperwork for whatever reason. She left him to that, instead sitting down in the living room and flipping a couple of chapters back to re-read them in case they came up in discussion in class.

An hour later Sherie arrived home, heading downstairs to see the new water meter before coming back up.

"So how is it that I'm the one that removed the battery from the obvious monitoring device stuck to the floor joists?" she asked as she dropped a battery pack on the counter.

"Meh," Ethan said, waving her off. "I pulled the antenna off right after the guy left, but didn't want to get out a screwdriver to pry it off of the joist."

"Oh. I guess the battery being on top made it harder for you to spot without standing on something that would've made me yell at you with your injured toe?"

"Probably, yes."

"Space has been jamming the nuclear battery powered monitoring device that uses some kind of omnidirectional broadcast wave since the man left earlier," Missy said. "Still is, actually, so my assumption is that the antenna and battery were decoys to lull us into a false sense of security."

Both adults looked in Missy's general direction for a moment, then sighed in unison. Sherie grabbed a screwdriver and headed back downstairs, returning a couple minutes later with the monitoring device. Putting it down on the table, slightly lopsided due to her having pulled some wood off of the beam with it, she glared at it.

"So," Ethan said. "What do we do with it if we can't turn it off?"

"We could send it to another Earth," Missy replied. "Or just have Space take it apart for raw materials. Or maybe have Hive come over to see if she can figure out where the receiver is? Space doesn't know where to begin there, or if it's even possible to find out."

"As tempting as that is," Sherie said, grabbing a bag. "Given our Protectorate membership, this should really be turned in properly. Especially as we don't know who was the target for the monitoring attempt."

Last edited: May 13, 2020

Mauling Snarks (Complete) - A Worm AU and Alt!Power fanfiction (TVTropes) || Hybrid Hive: Eat Shard? - A Worm/MGLN Crossover || My Random Snippets

[Taylor Varga Discord - Writing Workshop, where things are discussed at times]

My current avatar has no spirals. Honest.

I can please some of the people all of the time, and some of the people some of the time. This is the internet, so I fully understand that I can't please all of the people at all.

[Prompts from Elsewhere, where I post prompts I've answered and my answers] - [My Armsmaster's Excuse Generator Thread]

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Threadmarks Chapter 54 - May 24, 2011

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CmptrWz

CmptrWz

? ﾝﾖﾗ? ﾝﾖﾑ? ﾝﾖﾎ? ﾝﾖﾌ ? ﾝﾖﾚ? ﾝﾖﾍ? ﾝﾖﾗ

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Taylor relaxed in front of the television with her father that evening, going over various things that needed testing in the real world as well as other things that Hive had been working on. Specifically there was Hive's final analysis of making drones able to fire unwrapped antimatter projectiles. On one hand there weren't any changes needed to the drones to make it work, but on the other hand based on their expectations it wasn't likely to do much more than a normal unwrapped projectile if one was fired at an Endbringer.

The end result was that it would be a lot more dangerous for everything other than the Endbringer, on average, by virtue of leaving a mass of antimatter around that hasn't interacted with enough matter to be consumed. Sure, she could probably try and use drones to 'catch' the projectiles that missed, but that wasn't going to make fighting Ziz any easier. Thus it was likely much better to stick to more normal projectiles. Well, for certain definitions of 'normal' that the world at large probably disagreed with.

There were two possible exceptions to the problem. One was if the unfolding collapsed inside of the Endbringer, wherein it would now be antimatter reacting with matter inside of the Endbringer. Difficult to pull off, especially if the Endbringer was moving. The other was more theoretical, and Hive wanted to test it to see what happened, but it was possible that firing matter and antimatter unfolded projectiles at each other would result in an explosion when they met. So lining up two drones to fire such that their projectiles would intersect could be a viable option, pending testing.

Currently the plan was to drop a few testing drones in other dimensions in the morning and let Hive run through the real-world tests while Taylor was at her tutoring. That was going to be in addition to Hive running through some of the dimensional effects that had required building devices due to mana not being able to generate them properly. Hopefully at least a couple of them were safe and mana couldn't generate them because the effect immediately disrupted the mana instead of them being hazardous to everything. Hive was also hoping to have the first prototype of 'mana constructs that dismantle other mana constructs' ready by morning. Though this first test was apparently aiming to find out if Hive had been successful in making them identify only things other than each other as targets to attack so that the system wouldn't tear itself apart.

Taylor was distracted from preparing a few more things in simulation by the phone ringing, more specifically her Minerva phone. It was only a thought before she had another instance running to answer the call.

"Minerva speaking," she greeted.

"Good evening Minerva," the man on the other end replied. "I'm Jake Rivers, calling on behalf of the PRT. There are some documents that we need you to swing by to sign in regards to the shell company that we're setting up, as well as some items that have been forwarded to you via the PRT. Would you happen to have time to swing by on Thursday or Friday to take care of things?"

Ah, right. She'd been expecting that. Though not things forwarded through the PRT, admittedly. Still, she shouldn't have any significant problems with swinging by on Thursday, since if she wasn't done with her programming project then she'd just work on it next week. It wasn't due until the third anyway. "I should be able to swing by on Thursday afternoon."

"Great. Do let us know if things change, but otherwise we'll have things ready for you."

Wednesday morning started early, with Taylor having spent most of the night split between randomly slapping together equation bits in a small corner of the simulation interface and tweaking the editor she had for her objects list on her programming project. Sure, she probably should've done the latter in the computer lab instead of in the multitasking interface, but it wasn't like her tutors would know that she'd done anything at home. Even if they did, the code and data files themselves were plain text, so she could've edited them just fine even without the graphical tools and compilers.

The random equation bits had been the more interesting, even if she'd kept it to a dull roar while Hive used a significantly larger portion of the simulation interface for her own work. Most of the random equations had failed to do anything of interest at all, but a handful had done things. How useful they would be was also debatable. One of them had seemingly just made the mana black, though if additional elements could 'set' the color then that might be useful. Another had created an odd effect, seemingly manifesting a molecule that looked like buckminsterfullerene, but wasn't made of carbon atoms and had what might've been an electron cloud around it. A third had felt like it was generating a field of some kind, and she wasn't sure what it would do. The last on the list of things to test in the real world had just spun a lot.

All four would be tested by Hive while Taylor was in tutoring, along with everything else on the testing list. Hopefully some of the tests would go well, though for a couple of their projects Hive had come up with the idea of seeing if Taylor could get mana to do what they wanted without equations. If so then hopefully they could work backwards from there to make equations, or at least find out that equations couldn't generate the effects like unfolding mana constructs had ended up being. That would probably not be this afternoon, given that there was still work that needed to be done on the programming project.

Missy frowned as she arrived at school. Taylor was planning on staying after tutoring to work on a project, and thus wouldn't be available to work with her. Which was annoying, but hard to argue against. The world had survived all this time without Missy being trained up to join Taylor in combat, after all, so dealing with school assignments had to take priority. Worse, Sherie had shot down her getting any of the attack spells right now, wanting her to focus on defense and mobility first. That would be more annoying if it didn't make sense, because being able to not be hit was more important than hitting others when it came to survival.

Shaking her head, she put that out of her mind for now. Unknown to Ethan and Sherie, but possibly known to Taylor, she had three sensor drones running around on other planets. Two were on other versions of Earth and one she'd gotten close enough to another Venus to get the drone down to the planet. That she'd landed that drone ahead of the planet had likely helped there. There wasn't anything interesting to be seen after the first five minutes from any of the drones, but keeping them going at the same time that she was in school was training her ability to split her attention.

Hopefully she wouldn't find herself needing to dismiss one or more of the sensor drones during the day, but she had that option if the split in her attention proved to be too great.

Taylor frowned as tutors swapped out. It felt like something had happened, and she was almost positive that Hive was doing less all of a sudden. "Did something happen?"

"Yes, Lord," Hive responded. "That equation combination that made an unusual molecule took far more energy than originally anticipated. I was curious as to the final result, and fed it sufficient mana through some matter conversion, only for the molecule formed to prove to be hazardous."

"How hazardous?"

"It tore a hole in the dimensional fabric, triggering a localized dimensional quake. I can't be positive, but it likely obliterated the local star system while rendering travel through that region of space in that dimension impossible for a few hundred years."

Taylor blinked at that. That didn't sound good at all. "How much energy did it take to make the molecule?

"I had to convert six kilograms of sand to energy to create a single instance."

"Okay then. We definitely need to put that in the blacklist."

"Already done, Lord."

Taylor resisted the urge to nod, given that the next tutor had just come in. "So, how are the other tests going?"

"I'm still working my way through the dimensional effect generators, since I'm examining the area for signs of damage to the dimensional fabric each time. The lattice wrapper worked fine, and I've built that into a homing beam as well. Turn speed is limited, of course, but that's somewhat expected. I haven't fully determined what's going on with the black mana effect, but it isn't a color change. The element that you saw as spinning in simulation is actually reacting like a magnet when in a magnetic field, which is interesting and lends itself to easy creation of a compass. As for the one that generated an energy field in simulation, it doesn't appear to function in reality. I think it might be tripping a debugging routine in the simulation system instead."

"I suppose that makes some sense."

"Okay Miss Hebert," her tutor said, getting her attention. "Let's get started for the day."

Missy sat down with her lunch at the end of a table, next to the wall, having arrived before Dinah and Jared and not in the mood to stand around until one or both had sat down. Both had apparently returned today, Jared with a cast and Dinah looking perfectly healthy. It was also obvious that a large number of people were hoping to get the scoop from one or the other, given how many were standing around waiting instead of sitting down to eat.

A couple minutes later she was surprised when Dinah sat down across from her, a mad scramble starting among others in the room to get at the couple of seats next to them.

"Hello," Dinah greeted, looking Missy over. "How are you today?"

"I'm fine," Missy replied, raising an eyebrow. "What brings you to me today?"

The other girl rolled her eyes as a couple of others successfully claimed the seats next to her and Missy. "You're next to a wall, which means less people can sit down to pester me. That and I wanted to talk to you, since you've been someone conclusively proven to not be Vista now and all that. I'd have been willing to bet that you were, so I obviously misjudged you quite a bit."

"Ah. And here you are, having just come away from being held hostage. They didn't really clarify a whole lot about how much interaction you had with Minerva when you were being rescued, though."

"I had more interaction with her when my parents and uncle thanked her at the hospital, but I was still recovering."

"That's understandable."

It didn't take long for it to become obvious that Dinah was ignoring any questions posed to her by someone who wasn't Missy. Though if that was just to spite the pushy people that wanted to ask questions about her ordeal or because there was something else going on was harder to determine. At the very least, by the end of lunch Missy wasn't sure if she understood anything about Dinah's motivations.

Taylor actually took some time to check on the news when tutoring ended, because she wasn't sure what was going on outside today. It didn't take long to find out that there were groups running around again, apparently split three ways as far as the news could tell. The two largest were those that wanted to hunt Minerva down and those that wanted to praise and/or worship her, with quite a bit of fighting breaking out between them. Then there was one group that wanted to interrogate her for some reason, that one being smaller and more focused.

She might need to make an appearance in-costume beyond showing up at the PRT building tomorrow, just to see how many of the people were actually looking to attack her in some way. It was something to check with her father on, at least. But not today, because she had more work to do on her programming project and a couple of other assignments to bash out quickly. Perhaps she'd end up patrolling on Friday?

Getting into her work, she kept an eye on the news to see if anyone figured out why the group wanting to interrogate her wanted to do so, or at least what they were hoping to find out. Though she'd also like to know how they intended to keep her from leaving, since it didn't look like they had made any provisions for keeping someone contained long enough to interrogate them. Especially someone who could fly and teleport, the latter making most containment measures impossible unless you had a way to stop the teleporting.

A couple hours later she had no more information on what the goal was for the 'interrogate Minerva' group, but she'd made decent progress on her project. Specifically, she'd converted the example 'explore a static three-dimensional world' into a 'explore a static representation of the solar system at a single point'. She'd even made it so that you could change the starting point by changing the date and time, but you had to do that before loading the three-dimensional viewer. Or leave the viewer, change it, and go back in. Animating and changing parameters while in the interface would hopefully not take too long to get working.

She ensured that all of her files were saved to her removable media, and that Hive had a copy as well, before packing up and preparing to head home. A slight detour would be needed, based on where she thought some of the altercations had cropped up, but it wouldn't delay her too much on her way home.

Missy had been happy with her day training herself to deal with sensor drones, though she'd started to notice that the longer she kept them going the more noticeable the drain on her core was. Not because it was increasing or anything, but because she could feel the constant flow of mana to each drone. It had been interesting, well within her recovery ability to keep up with, and yet had also noticeably increased her appetite. Really, had it not taken more mana than keeping up her barriers did then she'd not have noticed at all, but now she was considering ways to 'push' herself to drain her core more to see if she could train it up some or not.

Regardless of thoughts about doing that, she'd dropped the drones before dinner, wanting to be able to mentally relax a bit more after keeping the drones going all day. It turned out that had been a very good idea, given that after the dishes were cleared away just after dinner Ethan pulled out a large envelope.

"So Missy," he said, handing her the envelope. "Yesterday the PRT collected a bunch of letters to you from the Wards, as well as compiled requests for contact information other than passing letters to be passed along. Sherie and I don't mind allowing the Wards to call you, but figured that you should review the requests yourself first. Pass along any of the ones you approve of and we'll take care of our end."

Missy absently nodded as she took the envelope and stared at it for a moment. She hadn't given the other Wards wanting to contact her a whole lot of thought, since she wasn't a Ward anymore and all that, but it did make some sense. For that matter, had she really barely thought about Dean at all since she approached Taylor? Wow. Now, the question there was why she'd all but dropped her crush on him. Was it a lack of seeing him? Knowledge that she no longer had any common ground to share with him? Or had her powers been pushing her to be with him?

Well, one of those she might be able to get an answer for.

"Hey Space," she sent. "Do you know if my shard device that you were built from was pushing me to do anything like, say, chase Dean?"

There was a pause, and a quick pulse of communication to elsewhere, before Space responded. "Hive tells me that it was pushing you to engage in conflict with others, something that all Shard-type devices she's worked with have done. She doesn't know the specifics, but believes that it's possible that you were pushed to 'compete' for another's affections if it was believed that the attempt or success would result in more conflict."

And that made parahuman powers all that more scary, because that sounded like they all mastered the people who had them as a default action. A light mastering perhaps, but the idea of her thoughts being messed with even that much was disconcerting. She didn't know if there was any way to make that particular detail known in a safe manner, assuming there was a safe way to tell the world that it was likely that every parahuman was being mastered at least a little. It did make her happy that she wasn't one anymore, at least not by traditional definitions.

Shivering slightly, she opened the envelope and found that there were some sheets of paper and a handful of smaller envelopes. The visible sheet had an obvious PRT letterhead and made it likely that those were the requests for being allowed to more directly contact her, so she focused on the smaller envelopes instead. Each of them had her name written on it, and she could tell which was which based on the handwriting alone. She decided to start with Dean's, opening it up and extracting a handwritten letter.

It took a minute to read it, some of it being that it looked like his pen had been trying to die on him as he wrote the thing, but it expressed concern over her and apologized for any trouble she might've had land on her lap for using his family's apartment without the knowledge of either of her parents. There was also an undercurrent of something that she wasn't fully certain about. It then went into some details about what her 'incident' had changed in the Wards, for the better and for the worse. That she didn't have a problem with part of the 'worse' being 'less time to go out with Vicky, since they had proper training and therapy sessions on top of everything else' was another interesting data point in her mind.

She put his letter back in the envelope and went for what she expected would be the opposite end of the spectrum with Dennis's. She opened his up, finding that it was typed out. Good choice, given his normally horrible handwriting. After all, she'd identified it as his based on her name being nearly unreadable on the envelope. Also, as expected, he cracked a joke right away, causing her to smirk, only to then defy expectations by then being serious. Apologizing for 'not seeing any of the signs' and describing a lot of the same things that Dean had when it came to changes that had happened. Though he ranted a bit about the local Youth Guard having been idiots as well.

Shaking her head, she moved on to Chris's letter. He'd also typed his, and he said that he wouldn't cover the changes because he fully expected one of the others to do so. Instead he apologized for not having gotten a working design for a gun for her completed before 'things went down'. Apparently he'd had the idea to build everyone else on the team something during their extended lack of patrolling, but hadn't wanted to say anything to her and the others until it was at least approved. He'd also included a coupon for half off an ice cream at a place on the Boardwalk.

Putting the coupon aside, she moved on to Carlos's letter. His was handwritten, but worded a bit more formally as the current Wards Leader. He apologized for any failures on his end, and asked that if there were any that she let him know so that he could work on fixing them. Armsmaster apparently felt that the blame lay further up, and Carlos described a little more about what had been going on from that point of view. He was also the first person to let her know that they were going to be doing a memorial thing for 'Vista' on Saturday as part of the larger PR event and asked if she was happy with a few specific details about things being mentioned.

Sighing, she pulled the other papers out of the envelope and confirmed that they were basically four copies of the same thing, one for each of the Wards. None of it was actually to do something official in the system, just to request that Ethan and Sherie permit more direct communication with Missy. Though that did bring up a question or two, actually.

"So," she said, looking up at the two adults. Both of whom had just been watching her. "I assume that you two have control over my phone's whitelist now?"

"Technically we don't," Sherie said. "In that when it was switched over to our plan we didn't bother with one. We didn't want to pay the extra two dollars a month for the capability. Though we are going to have to see about getting a new email address that isn't tied to school for you, since we don't have the same internet provider that your father was using and thus can't transfer your address to our account."

"He'd set it up so that everything had to go through his account before I could see it anyway. Meant that I did basically nothing with it."

Ethan raised an eyebrow. "Okay then, I'm curious what you were doing for a personal email account in that case. Because I can't see you using your school one for everything?"

Missy rolled her eyes at that. "There are at least two dozen free email services that ask zero questions, and when I joined the Wards the packets I got included a list of the ones that were known to be trustworthy, fronts for villainous thinkers, or were known to be run by villains even if they didn't seem to be taking advantage of things at the time. It was obviously intended as a warning about the services, but it was a handy list and I signed up for all of the trustworthy ones."

Sherie frowned. "Then why didn't the other Wards have one of those email addresses to contact you with?"

"Because three days after I gave one of them to Triumph while he was Wards Leader the account was closed due to my age and I didn't want to lose the others for the same reason. He swore that he hadn't reported it, but he did have it in his contact list for me, so I assumed that someone was monitoring things."

"We'll get you set up with a proper one," Ethan said after a moment. "It shouldn't take more than half an hour, provided that I remember our account management credentials. Have you gotten your email and phone number stuff from Taylor yet?"

That had Missy blinking. "Er, no. Hadn't thought that she'd give me any, actually."

"I'd ask her."

Taylor looked at her father oddly after they'd had dinner. He'd asked her to hold up, then grabbed something from the bag he'd brought to work. It was only as he approached her with a box and an envelope that she started to truly wonder what was going on.

"The PRT swung by and dropped these off with me earlier," he explained, holding both the box and the envelope out to her. "They explained a few things to me, and assured me that things were legitimate."

Raising an eyebrow, Taylor took the box and the envelope. Normally she'd probably open the envelope first, but the information she was getting from her sensor had her far too curious about the contents of the box. It wasn't like it was wrapped or anything either, and she carefully opened it up. Inside was a flute, a very familiar flute, and she carefully lifted it out of the box to examine it. In particular, she looked for and found the partially-worn surface engraving, Annette in cursive with a small imperfection from where something else had been sanded off.

"How?" Taylor asked, tears in her eyes as she held her mother's flute.

Her father gestured to the envelope that she hadn't even realized that she'd dropped. "I believe that the letter explains things. At the very least you should read it before I say anything more."

It took a moment to carefully place the flute back in the box and the box onto the table before she reached down and picked up the letter. It didn't have any writing on the outside, and she absently noted that it both wasn't sealed and had signs of people having removed the letter multiple times already. Carefully extracting the letter, she found that it was neatly handwritten on lined paper.

Taylor,

My actions don't deserve forgiveness, but I'd like to offer an explanation of sorts. I'm not sure what you know about parahumans, but I've come to realize that at least my powers had pushed me to an extreme. Now that I don't have them pushing me, I've found that I can think a little more clearly. Even so, there's an echo of what I'd been, what I was pushed to becoming, that will likely never truly fade. Regardless of that influence, I fear that my actions were still largely my own and would like to apologize. Very few people deserve even a tenth of what we did to you, even fewer would've been able to put up with it without snapping in some way. Apologies like this are probably shallow, but I'm sorry for what we did to you.

Still, that doesn't fully explain why I'm writing this. Everyone has their secrets, and early on I ended up with several items that I couldn't pawn. Criminals occasionally steal from each other, and I didn't want to take the fall for things that I'd stolen from a druggie that had stolen them from another. Rather than ditch the items in a sensible manner, I kept them hidden, fearful that they'd be able to be traced back to me. Eventually I even found a safe place to keep them, and in doing so I started to see them as trophies. Trash that I couldn't get rid of became signs that I was better than those who had lost the items in the first place.

Sadly, that led to me looking for more trophies once I started going out to fight the gangs. After all, I hadn't been fighting when I'd gotten my first trophies, the ones I got from combat would be even better. From there things got more twisted in my mind, and I started wanting items from anyone that I bested. Especially those that I felt that I'd bested frequently.

Which brings us to the other reason for this letter. I've revealed the hidden location of my trophy room and asked that several items be returned to those they were taken from. This will generally be done without fanfare for most. However, I felt that you deserved more than that.

Maybe it's because of how focused we became on you, or perhaps I needed to vent some guilt. Everyone has things hidden in them, some just never get a chance to examine themselves to see them.

-Sophia Hess

Taylor read the letter four times, blinking as she did so, before finally looking up at her father. "What the hell?"

He sighed. "She was, in her own way, just as screwed over by things as you were. When she lost her powers it resulted in her realizing just how badly they'd affected her. Over the weekend she wrote that letter, plus I'm told a couple of others, and asked that the PRT collect the trophies and return them to those that they'd been taken from. I didn't get informed about the others, just that they found everything exactly as the girl described and some of it was a surprise."

"Really?"

"I'd think that your mother's flute would be incredibly good evidence that this isn't a trick, though the carrying case wasn't found with it."

Taylor looked back down at the flute. "They left that in my locker, and it honestly wasn't in the best condition anyway. I think I might have crammed it in the attic somewhere, but I'm sure that I can do better now anyway. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Hive can help me do better, and I'm probably going to keep it in my storage space to keep it close to me going forward. I don't want to lose it again."

He nodded, a sad smile on his face. "I understand. The other thing that you should probably know about all of this is that this swing in Hess's attitude has them considering that she may very well have not been entirely in her right mind. At the very least, her defense lawyer is likely to use it as evidence to get any and all of her sentences reduced, though some of that was going to happen when she was depowered anyway. She stopped warranting the higher security cells that they had been keeping her in, for example."

"I guess that makes some sense." She then looked down at the letter. "Though having something in her own handwriting, admitting that she was wrong? I might want to frame it. This letter has to be one of the rarest things in existence."

He snorted. "Except for the other couple that she wrote alongside it?"

Right he'd said something about that. "The others weren't addressed to me."

"Okay, I guess I can give you that one. Still, if you think it's that rare then perhaps you should put it into a safe location instead of in a picture frame. I doubt that's archival quality paper or anything, after all."

That had her raising an eyebrow. "What would you know about archival quality paper?"

"You do realize how many blueprints, contracts, and other documentation the Dockworkers and related unions keep around, right? A few years ago we had problems with a bunch of it and transferring copies onto proper paper for longer term storage was all that got talked about for months."

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That evening started with Taylor reluctantly reviewing Hive's final findings from the day. The creation of mana constructs to tear apart other mana had ended up in a 'good enough to move on' state, which meant working on making them able to attack the bonds between other bits of mana. Though there was also a desire to make it so that specific signatures could be targeted or excluded, with Hive expecting that to be limited to at most three individual signatures in either direction.

On the dimensional effects front, Hive had run through every dimensional axis available, including the negative dimensional axes, and had even used combinations where possible. On a mildly concerning front, nine different individual dimensional axes known primarily to the shard-type devices had momentary disruption effects on mana, but only really affected delicate constructs. The permanent multitasking instance connection sadly qualified there, and Hive had started to look into ways to keep it from being negatively affected by something like that going forward. At the same time, it appeared that each just, for lack of a better term, 'surprised' the mana and only seemed to work once every forty-two minutes or so.

More usefully, 'tumbling' the eleventh and thirty-first dimensional axes together around the twenty-first caused problems with mana. There were three 'levels' of effect that Hive had noted, depending on how you tumbled things. At the lowest level, linked mana naturally 'shielded' against the effect on its own, but the outer surface exposed to the effect also had most of the links between particles of mana fail. There were notable exceptions there, those confirmed by Hive were those that made solid objects that could persist for at least a week in a manaless environment. The Knight Armor and all derivative spells were included in that, including the anchor. Unconfirmed but suspected by Hive were the linkages forming the permanent link to the multitasking system, as they shared key qualities with the others. Taylor wasn't looking forward to confirming that, even if she knew that it was important to find out.

The next level was very similar to the lowest level, but took twice as much energy to generate and added a limited 'shield piercing' ability. Up to several inches of mana would be affected at once from the surface, making many spells fall apart entirely. This was hindered, instead of blocked entirely, by the unaffected linkages. You'd need multiple layers of them to properly shield against the effect, the thicker the better.

It was the last level, taking eight times the energy of the second, that changed things. The unaffected linkages remained unaffected, but you'd need more than thirty feet of solid shielding to block the effect. Worse, it appeared to speed up the breakdown of unlinked and uncontained mana. Casting anything in that kind of environment would be nearly impossible, so of course Hive wanted to have Taylor enter such a field so that they'd know what other potential side effects to watch out for from one.

Another useful detail was that the range of the effect was fully dependent on the size of the 'tumbling' unit itself more than the power you put in. At lower power levels the effect had a gradual ramp-up as you approached the origin point while higher power levels pushed the 'full effect' zone out further from the origin point. The exception was if you pushed enough power in to theoretically get the 'full effect' to happen outside of the maximum range of the effect, at which point you'd start tearing the dimensional fabric instead.

Casting from outside of the three levels was also going to need more testing, of course, including what kinds of shielding might be possible. Being able to locate and destroy something generating such an effect seemed like it would be an important ability, because there was no way that Hive was the first one to discover this. Even if it couldn't be tied to the mana-generated barrier effect that supposedly did something similar, given that mana couldn't generate this effect at all without using linkages that the effect would tear apart.

With all of that review done, they finally 'sat down' in the simulation interface and designed a protective case for the returned flute. The end result was probably at least a little excessive, but Taylor didn't care and Hive didn't say anything about it. Anyone who wasn't Taylor or her father trying to force the case open would be in for a number of shocks. Starting with literal electrical shocks before it teleported away with either the blink or dimensional transference spells. If it couldn't teleport away for some reason then it would move on to sprouting nanotech disassembly and molecular splitters and firing homing bullets at those trying to open it.

Sadly, it wouldn't be done in time to leave for tutoring in the morning, so Taylor would have to settle for wrapping the flute in protective fabric and storing it in her storage space without the protective case itself.

Missy had sat down and written responses to all of the Wards, answering Carlos's questions and asking all of them some questions of her own. She'd been able to include her new email address and her cell phone number as well, above and beyond whatever the requests for information forms that the adults were handling would result in. That had been followed by a plan for some additional magic training when Taylor wasn't around, specifically seeing what she could do with the telekinesis spell.

Keeping track of something that you're moving around with the spell was trivial when you weren't moving as well, or when you were specifically moving it towards or away from you. Otherwise it required a lot more focus, not that you could tell that when Taylor used it. Ethan had come up with the idea of walking around the house while using the spell to hold playing cards around her. Well, Sherie had downgraded it from 'knives' to 'playing cards', even if it would provide far less incentive for not screwing up.

To Missy's annoyance, for the initial test of that she could only keep two playing cards near her without constantly bumping into them or having them impact things around her. She wasn't supposed to wander near anything fragile as a result of the latter. On that front, she was tempted to ask Taylor and Hive to go hunt down Rune, because she could do this kind of thing with her parahuman abilities and knowing how she did it could only help. But that would send incredibly wrong messages to everyone. So instead she started wishing that Rune would be a complete idiot and attack Taylor while the older girl was out of costume.

She wasn't wishing hard, but she was wishing for it to happen. At least for now, as she'd probably give up on that in a day or two at the most.

Thursday morning, after morning exercise, Missy found herself wondering why Ethan and Sherie were running around a bit, tidying things up. In particular, both of them seemed to take special care to collect their command console business cards and slip them into pockets on them. Once she had finished her breakfast and deposited her dishes in the sink she walked over to where Ethan was double-checking things in the hall.

"What's got you two so worked up?" she asked.

Ethan blinked, then sighed. "Right, forgot to tell you. Yesterday Sherie turned in the monitoring device, in addition to a better-hidden one that she found while you were exercising. That one was attached to a simple wind-up timer to turn on in three or so days. Today an investigative team is coming in to ensure that we didn't miss anything else that might've been left behind. If they find something that we would be reasonably expected to have found then we'll have to go through retraining on locating such items, but we also need to ensure that they don't find the things that we know about and don't want them to find. Mostly related to magic, in this case, which there's thankfully very little of when you aren't in the house."

"Oh."

"Though we will need to do another pass once the investigative team leaves, because we wouldn't put it past them to leave their own monitoring device or two as an added test. If they do and we don't turn them in by Monday then we'll be put through the training again anyway. You're lucky in that you don't have to worry about that aspect, even if I don't think it would be a horrible thing to put you and Taylor through at some point. Even if you two cheat horribly." He then frowned, and looked down at the 'rug' sitting there in the hallway. "Do you think they'll know that anything is odd about the rug?"

Missy shrugged. "I doubt it, but if you're concerned then I'm sure that it can be better hidden for a bit."

"And how would we do that?"

A quick request to Space had the transport device pack itself up into standby form, leaving a small orange hexagonal crystal. That was followed by the flash of the crystal being stored by Missy. "Like that. No more rug to be concerned about, though sweeping up the little bit of dust that'd accumulated around the edges looks like it might be a good idea."

Ethan blinked a couple of times, then nodded as he looked between Missy and where the 'rug' had been. "Okay, yes, that would definitely do it. I'll grab the broom and dustpan."

Taylor sighed as she put away her work from her first tutor. Her second of three tutors had called in sick today, so she wasn't sure if she should head out and wander for a bit or sit down in the computer lab to work on her project some more. Regardless of which way she went there, she was going to start with a quick trip to the restroom. Not because she needed to use it, but because it was a safe enough place for Hive to pull out the new case for her mother's flute.

Transferring the flute over to the new case and storing the whole thing only took a minute, after which she used the restroom while she was there anyway. With that taken care of, she swung over to the computer lab to check the news. People were once again out and about in their groups, though she was concerned about the 'interrogate' group last being seen wandering the Boardwalk. Perhaps it would be better to stay inside for the time being after all.

Switching gears, she loaded up her programming project and continued to work at it. To get things other than the camera to move in the world required writing a physics module for each kind of item she was going to be moving. Which for her purposes was a single module, as she wasn't making a game that had a multitude of various things that acted in different ways. If she got extra ambitious then she'd have two physics modules, with one of them being for labels floating over things. If only because there was what amounted to an example for how to do just that available that she could just tweak slightly.

By lunch she'd made decent progress on that. The difficulties of ensuring that it could run at multiple display speeds, including in reverse, had enough of her interest to be something that she was likely to continue working on at home. Getting the motion scaling correct wasn't trivial, and a very quick test had shown that the toolkit's run speed settings weren't going to work entirely. You couldn't run the toolkit backwards, only faster or slower, and she wanted to allow for running things in reverse.

Missy had once again sat down on her own for lunch, and for the second day in a row she found Dinah sitting across from her. Which was odd, as there shouldn't be any new 'scoop' for Dinah to want to talk to her about, as they'd already covered the whole 'Missy not being Vista' thing. There was less of a scramble to get seats near them today, but a few people did their best to get at the table anyway.

"So what brings you to me today?" Missy asked.

"You intrigue me," Dinah admitted. "That, and you're one of the few sources of consistently intelligent conversation around here."

"Really?"

"That and I don't want to be anywhere near the mess that someone is likely to create while trying to help Jared."

Missy rolled her eyes at that. "So do you have any plans for the weekend?"

Dinah sighed. "No. My parents are still a bit freaked out over me being taken. They're not going to let me go to anything fun unless at least one of them is along for the trip now. Which would probably be fine if not for everything else going on."

"Ah. Yeah, I've got some annoying restrictions of my own right now."

"What about you?"

Missy pulled slightly on Space's chain. "The PRT wants some of my time to have some people examine my new necklace some more. Unremovable jewelry of unknown, if seemingly benign, purpose and all."

"Too bad about Vista passing. She'd probably be able to make the gap in the necklace wide enough for you to get off."

"Maybe, or maybe not. Something about the necklace, or even just that I'm wearing it, might mean that she couldn't affect it properly."

"I suppose. And if your necklace is anything like Taylor Hebert's necklace then it's probably 'not', because I can't see them not having tried to have Vista help remove that one."

"True, unless they felt that the necklace was too much of a potential danger to expose a Ward to."

Dinah frowned. "Right. They'd catch all kinds of hell if they exposed a Ward to something possibly-lethal intentionally outside of an emergency, wouldn't they?"

"Keeping Wards safe is supposed to be part of the whole deal."

Taylor had headed straight home after tutoring, collecting the mail and a package for her as she entered the house. The rest of the mail appeared to just be bills, but the package was a 'prize' that she'd apparently won, consisting of an old-fashioned wind-up alarm clock. Which could've been nice, if it didn't have a little camera and transmitter hidden in it.

"So what should we do with this?" Taylor asked Hive.

"It may be best to make it seem like the ruse worked," Hive replied. "I can set the relay unit to broadcast fake video from the camera easily enough."

"Yeah...except that this would normally be intended to be in my bedroom. There's no way that I want any video of me changing to be sent out, fake or otherwise."

"That is a good point, Lord. In that case I'm going to recommend putting it back in the box, face-down, and then having your father report it as suspicious. I'm sure that the PRT will be interested."

"And here I expected you to want to pull it apart."

"The system is nothing special and having it just vanish would send the wrong kind of message to those monitoring the feed from it."

"I suppose."

A few minutes later the box with the bugged alarm clock was closed back up and Taylor was preparing to head off as Minerva. She had to visit the PRT today, after all.

Taylor landed near the PRT building after flying in from the Bay, doing her best to ignore that there'd been sudden movement of multiple groups as soon as she'd arrived. Hive didn't land, instead remaining floating along next to Taylor. The two headed straight for and into the PRT building before anyone could really react to where they'd ended up, two stealthed sensor drones remaining outside to monitor things. It was likely that a crowd was going to form before they could leave, after all.

"Hello Minerva, Lilia," the man at the desk greeted as they approached. "Give me a moment to have someone come to escort you." Taylor nodded as the man radioed that she was there, then he grabbed a folder and pulled two passes out of it. "Also, here are your visitor passes, you'll need them for being brought down to storage."

That had Taylor raising an eyebrow, but she accepted the two passes. It only took a moment to figure out which was which. She hung her pass around her neck and handed Hive the other. The passes were identical sizes, but they'd been thinking far enough ahead to have a much shorter lanyard on the one that they'd prepared for Hive. The pass itself was still comically large on her.

A moment later a young woman came out of the back. "Minerva?"

The man at the desk waved them on as the phone rang, so Taylor headed over to the woman. "Good afternoon."

"Likewise," the woman said. "I'm Nina and I've been asked to escort you down to storage to pick up the items that have been forwarded to you through the PRT."

"Not an officer or agent?"

Nina snorted as she led Taylor and Hive into the back and down the hall. "Office staff. Two days ago I was an intern, then I found out that they'd arrested my supervisor for corruption over the weekend. I was found to be trustworthy, apparently, so they offered me his position on a temporary basis while other shifts happened. The worst part is that I'm doing less than I was under the asshole, since apparently I was essentially already doing all of his work and a bunch of busywork to cover for his misdeeds."

Taylor blinked at that. "So they offered you his job when they found out that you'd already been doing it?"

"Basically. Apparently they'd thought that needing to watch an intern had been the kick needed to improve his work, only to find out that his work had improved because he'd fobbed it all off onto said intern. Namely me. No clue what he'd have done when my internship ended next month, but I guess we won't be finding out either. Oh, right, elevator or stairs?"

The sudden shift had Taylor pausing. "I don't think I care either way?"

Nina nodded, moving over to and opening a stairwell door. "Then let's take the stairs, it looks like the elevator is a few floors up so it'll be faster. It's only two stories anyway."

They headed downstairs, with Nina needing to swipe her ID and enter a passcode to open the door when they got there. The hallway down here was less clean than the ones upstairs, the floor showing signs of things being moved around regularly.

Nina caught Taylor looking at the floor and sighed. "Several of us wish that there was a tinkertech solution to keep things nicer down here, but it's the primary storage area and gets too much traffic as things are moved in and out. This hallway in particular gets a lot of use due to being connected to the front freight-rated elevator."

Taylor nodded. "I suppose that not everyone can just teleport things to where they need them."

"You have no idea how much a number of us wish we could do that, especially with the range you've got. Weren't you able to bring FBI teams in from other states entirely and hit the exact room you wanted them to arrive in?"

"Our methods are easily accurate to within a quarter of an inch when operating at extreme ranges," Hive answered. "Provided that we have suitable targeting data available."

Nina paused at that. "Seriously?"

"With less targeting data available it tends to be easier to allow for some slack in the parameters to allow for choosing a suitable opening on arrival, which can make things shift out to a variance of several feet instead, but otherwise yes."

"That's insane, and now I'm going to stop asking questions before I get too jealous." She then shook her head and started moving again. "Besides, we're just about at the storage room."

It was one more turn in the hallway before they came to a large rolling door blocking access to a large room that Taylor's sensor told her was crammed full with things. Nina moved to the smaller door next to it and once again swiped her card and entered a passcode. The door unlocked and she opened it, flipping on a light and beckoning Taylor and Hive to join her inside. They did so, and Taylor found herself hoping that Nina knew where in the pile of things in the room the items they were here for were. There was a lot piled up in it, after all, and it didn't look labeled at all.

"So here we are," Nina said. "To be perfectly honest, we're hoping that you have a good way of getting all of this out to wherever you might need it."

Taylor blinked. "All of it?"

"Yeah, you can probably tell that we're running out of room here and we don't want to need to empty out a second storage room just to put materials that were sent to you through us in it."

Hive floated off into the room, darting through the limited aisles that had been left behind while Taylor processed that. She'd been expecting a stack of letters or something, not a storage room full of materials. Finally she shook her head. "Why did all of this get sent my way?"

Nina shrugged. "I'm assuming that it stems from your list of materials that you were caught talking to Armsmaster about, especially given the large spools of wire in the back corner."

"I can easily store it all for later," Hive said as she floated back over. "I don't think there's any exagranium here, but all of the other requested materials are available in reasonable quantities."

That had Nina blinking. "Store it all as in teleport it to a storage location?"

"Store it all in my internal storage."

Nina looked at the pile of things in the room, and then back at Hive. "Please don't tell me that you're going to do that by eating it all?"

Hive rolled her own eyes, and then things started vanishing in flashes of light. After ten seconds the room was empty except for the three of them, some tables, and several sets of shelves. "I assume that we weren't intended to take the tables or shelves, especially as they appear to be bolted in place."

"Er, no, though I don't think anyone would've complained too much if you had in a single 'empty the room' teleport. Also, I'm getting jealous again."

"I don't have anything like that kind of storage personally," Taylor offered.

Nina shook her head. "Right, right. Well, since we're done here, we can head back upstairs. I was told that the rest of your visit is for paperwork reasons."

"That's what I was led to believe, yes."

Missy had arrived back home after school to find that the investigation squad had just left. Ethan and Sherie looked exhausted, but pleased, though a number of things looked like they'd been moved around significantly. The hall desk, for example, wasn't pushed all the way up against the wall.

"Everything good so far?" Missy asked.

"They did a very complete search and found nothing," Sherie replied. "They were even amazed that the water meter was a legitimate water meter that hadn't been tampered with. Of course, as we put everything back together we'll need to check to ensure that the team didn't leave anything behind for us to find."

Missy nodded. "Want me to see if Space and I can find anything?"

Ethan waved in her general direction. "Go for it, if you want to. I'm not going to tell you not to. Though just make note of where they are and don't tell us, so that we can see what we can find and then compare notes afterwards."

"Okay then."

Missy dropped her bag off upstairs in her room, where it looked like the team hadn't gone, and then headed back downstairs. Over the course of the next hour she and Space looked over everywhere they could think of. In the process they found four things that looked suspicious, though only one of them had been prevented from transmitting by Space. Missy wrote all four locations down on a notepad with descriptions of what they'd found before deciding that she was done.

By that point Ethan and Sherie were ready to start putting everything back together while performing their own search, so Missy grabbed a snack and left them to it. Though once they were done in the hallway she retrieved the transport device and worked with Space to redeploy it as the rug that it'd been pretending to be before they'd packed it up that morning. No need to leave it packed up, and it would be annoying to need to unpack it before Taylor came over or something else like that.

Taylor signed the last form that she'd been given for the shell company, which was also 'taking over' the patents that had already been filed to make a number of things easier. They'd had a bunch of 'allow people to continue to license the patents' paperwork for her as well.

"I think that does it for that set," Taylor said, splitting the last form into her copy and the copy to be filed.

"I do believe it does," Deputy Director Renick said, collecting the copy of the form and verifying that it was filled out correctly. Nodding, he dropped it onto his pile, then pulled out another folder with forms. "Now then, we suspect that you'd rather not have to run around signing other paperwork on behalf of the shell company in order to handle accepting property. If that's the case, these forms will allow the PRT to accept gifts of property, developed or otherwise, on behalf of the shell company for you."

Taylor took those forms and started reading them. They were straightforward enough, and looked to do exactly what Renick had said on the surface. She also didn't object to things such as the PRT examining the land for suitability of use for commercial purposes, zoning or otherwise, and ensuring that any existing structures shouldn't be condemned and torn down before the property was accepted. A couple of terms had been double-checked online, and she ensured that both copies were identical before agreeing to sign them. Renick signed on behalf of the PRT, she signed on behalf of herself, and copies went to both of their piles.

"Is that finally it?" Taylor asked.

"There's technically one more thing," Renick replied. "A couple of other federal agencies have asked for us to approach you regarding your civilian identity. They'd like you to register it with us so that you're eligible for signing NDA forms in light of your unprecedented ability to access computer networks."

Taylor pointed at Hive. "She has unprecedented access to computer networks and no legal civilian identity here that I'm personally aware of. I just happen to have access to her."

"I am not from this Earth in several significant ways," Hive agreed.

Renick nodded. "We didn't expect you to agree either way, but we're required to ask once a year if any agency has put forth a request for us to do so. With that taken care of, I think we're done here. Unless you have any additional questions for me?"

Taylor sighed. "I don't suppose that you'll let me leave via the roof?"

That had the man blinking. "Why would you want to leave that way?"

"Well, unless you want my help with the mini-riot outside. I was seen coming in and it looks like multiple groups have been looking to intercept me on my way out, only to disagree with one another."

"Oh. You know what, let me drop the paperwork off and get a situation report. If you're willing to help subdue people then I'm not going to complain about it."

He collected the stack of papers and left the room, Taylor storing her stack as he did so.

"Did we learn anything of use from the containment foam samples Hal collected?" Taylor sent to Hive while they waited.

"Not really," Hive answered. "I can produce the foam and the release agent, but the former requires a very small amount of extra-dimensional twist in one component that makes it incompatible with being properly emulated by mana."

"Oh well, using it would probably bring up questions we wouldn't want asked right now anyway."

It was a couple minutes later before Renick returned. "Sorry to keep you waiting. We're working with the police department on the crowd outside and don't want to have to adjust plans for your involvement. If you want to leave through the roof then I'll bring you up."

Taylor nodded. "I think that would be easier than walking out the front door right now, yes."

They took an elevator up to the roof, where there was a helicopter pad, and Renick looked Taylor over once they stepped outside. "So, I'm curious. We're under the assumption that you could just teleport away. Why not do that from inside the building?"

"If we aren't seen leaving the building then the crowds down there will be less likely to disperse."

"Ah. That's a good point. Well, have a nice evening."

Taylor nodded as she cast the flight spell, not having maintained it while inside the building. "You too."

A moment later she'd taken off, and she stopped while hovering just over the edge of the building just long enough for someone in the crowd below to spot her. Once that had happened she took off for the Bay, having her surveillance drones move away from the PRT building at the same time. Returning to her standard 'arrival' point over the water, she triggered a dimensional transference to the beach.

Hive immediately moved off towards the inlet, probably to drop the supplies off with the construction drones that were working over there, and Taylor left her to it. That only took a few minutes before Hive returned so that they could drop the Knight Armor and head back home. Once there Taylor made a point of going out back for a bit, cycling surveillance drones while she visibly looked over things as though trying to determine what needed to be done to the yard. Her father arrived a few minutes before she was done, and she went back inside to talk with him about her afternoon.


	10. intravellerslight1

Nov 30, 2016

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#1

Hey everyone! It's ya boi...

Wait lemme start over.

So, I've had this idea percolating in my brain for a very long while now. Thought I'd put pen to paper, so to speak and get some of it out. It's a Worm/Destiny fusion, where I play fast and loose with the lore and canon of both worlds, so if something doesn't match up with what you recall, I probably did that on purpose. I'm gonna try and drop at least 2k words a week on it, and before you ask, no my other fic "Lizard Queen" is not abandoned. Writers block is a bitch, and I've been working on an original fiction, plus World of Warcraft, work...etc etc etc.

ANYway, read, critique, comment.

Enjoy.

Excerpt from the journal of Xion, Warlock of the First Order, Second Speaker of the Traveler.

The Collapse, and the Man in Shadow

It was a bleak day. I know, as I was there. The sky was overcast and the air cold. The last vestiges of humanity had been pushed back to this place, our last refuge, The Last City.

We fought with all we had, since the City was all we had left. We could not let it fall.

We fought valiantly, but it was ultimately for nothing once it arrived. The Darkness.

Nothing we had was effective against it. It blithely ignored our best efforts, disregarding our most powerful weapons. Singularities, anti-matter, para-causal munitions; weapons which we dared not use for fear of obliteration were deployed against the Darkness. But it was for nothing. It advanced with one goal in mind. One singular focus.

The Traveler, our Alpha Lupi.

Even our benefactor knew she was out matched. She made to flee, but something struck her from beneath, like daggers of light, and crippled her. Then, she released a wave of pure light. It washed over us, and our foes, killing them where they stood. It drove off the Darkness, and as it fled, we celebrated. For we had survived.

But at what cost…?

And with her dying breath, the Traveler created the Ghosts, to do what she could not…

Sudden self-awareness was odd, the Ghost decided.

Going from being part of an unfathomable whole to being all on its lonesome was a novel experience at first. It could make it's own decisions and do what it pleased as long as it followed its prime directive; finding its Guardian.

But it didn't know the first place to start looking. Somewhere out there, in the wide expanse of everything was one person that was a perfect match for it. The one person that it was tasked with finding, to impart its gifts upon. The Ghost was inexorably drawn… everywhere and nowhere at once. It was frustrating.

Even as the excitement of being self-aware began to wane, the Ghost missed being part of that unfathomable whole. It longed to be back in the loving embrace of the Travelers light with no cares. No worries. No awareness.

Still, it had been given a task, and it was going to complete this task no matter what it took. So the Ghost left the shadow of the Travelers corpse. It searched the Last City. It searched the country side.

It searched…

And it searched…

And still it searched, fruitlessly.

Hopelessly. Avoiding dangers of the land, and from the darkness alike, the Ghost searched.

The Ghost's chronometer told it that centuries had passed since its creation. And finally it had finished searching Earth to no avail. Many of the other Ghosts had found their Guardians, and the Ghost celebrated even as it felt frustration and envy.

Eventually, the Ghost made it to Venus. After explaining its dilemma to a kind Guardian, the Ghost was given a ride on the Guardians jumpship. Perhaps the Ghost would find its own Guardian there, and the Guardian was headed there anyway. It had heard tales of other ghosts finding their Guardians in the ruins of Freehold on Mars, and one ghost even found its guardian on the moon, in an old lunar base.

During the journey, which was blissfully short, the Ghost listened to the tales of adventure from the Guardian's ghost. It especially liked the one about the ghost finding its Guardian in the ruins of an old Cosmodrome in what used to be Russia, the two of them making their daring escape and flight back to the Last City.

The Ghost looked forward to being able to tell it's own tales.

Eventually they made it to Venus. Its sickly yellow cloud cover looked as foreboding as the blue and green gem of earth looked welcoming. Even as they flew through the atmosphere, toward the ruins of the city of Ishtar, the Ghost knew that it was in the right place. The pull toward its Guardian was stronger here, even if it still had no particular direction.

The Guardian landed their jumpship on the outskirts of the city. Something about there being a large Fallen presence in the city itself, and that it was too dangerous. The Ghost didn't particularly care, since it was just happy to be out of the ship and looking again.

They bid each other farewell and good luck, and the Ghost watched briefly as the Guardian hurried off into the City. Soon, the sounds of gunfire echoed up the canyon and the Ghost turned to start looking in the opposite direction.

It seemed that fortune smiled on the Ghost, since it didn't have to look for long. It felt a pull toward a ruin, an enormous circular vault door and here it was vexed. The pull lead the Ghost into the vault, but no matter where it looked, it could not find a way in.

But soon its frustration was abated, as a fireteam of Guardians assaulted the vault. In a fierce battle against the robots guarding it, the Guardians breached the door, and the Ghost followed the six in. The Ghost's own path followed the Guardians for a while, wandering off occasionally to explore on its own, but inevitably it ended up back with the Guardians.

It didn't know how long it was in the vault with the fireteam. Time flowed strangely in the caves, and listening in, the Ghost heard talk from the guardians. The caves were created by the Vex, robots that existed outside of time, and the caves were their base of sorts. A place where the Vex were absolute masters of time.

The thought scared the Ghost, but it knew it was close, so it endeavored on. The ghost followed the Guardians as they fought, and eventually they came to a massive crystal archway. As the Guardians engaged the crystal titan under the arch, the Ghost knew it was almost there. It floated forward, and everything…

...began…

...to stretch…

It was everywhere and nowhere at once. Everywhen and nowhen as well. It saw things, realities that existed and did not exist. That will and will never exist. Alternate planets flashed by one after another. A barren lifeless rock. A seething mass of magma. A jungle earth. A desert earth. And just when it thought that it would go mad, everything snapped into place.

It was night time and the Ghost was hovering over a city on a bay. Lights glittered down below it as the Ghost ran scans. Its chronometer was off by almost fifteen hundred years. And, somehow, it was back on earth.

Odd…

Still, the connection with its Guardian was stronger than ever, and the Ghost knew that its Guardian was down in the city below, so it floated down. Its search took it past a building. A school, it thought. A sign outside the building proclaimed it to be 'Winslow High School'. Its Guardian had been here, once. But time had passed, and the Guardian had moved. The Ghost continued to follow the connection, and its path lead it through the heart of the city.

All around it was the best and worst of humanity. On the surface, gleaming buildings rose hundreds of storeys above and vehicles sped past. Even at night, humans bustled around and were busy. But in the shadows, and in the alleys between buildings, the Ghost saw crime. It saw suffering.

It saw a reason for a Guardian.

So it hurried on, doing its best to ignore the bustling night in the city and remain undetected. Somewhere to its right, a dog barked at it, and the Ghost hid. A girl that the Ghost estimated to be in her mid teens came from behind a convenience store and looked around.

"There's nothing here," she said brusquely to the dog. "Come on."

And she dragged the dog back behind the building by its scruff.

The Ghost continued on, eventually following the connection to the potential guardian to another building. This one had a sign on a swatch of grass that decorated a lane in front of the building. The sign read, "Brockton Bay Police Department." Below the name of the building was another line in a script font. "To Protect and Serve," it read.

Filled with dismay, the Ghost realized that it would have to infiltrate a primitive law enforcement agency to find its Guardian.

So the Ghost floated on. It followed a police officer into the building, since the doors were manually opened by a handle. It stayed close to the man, by his utility belt. Perhaps it could blend in as a tool. As the officer passed a vending machine, the Ghost zipped into the shadows between a snack machine and a soda machine. It waited until another man walked by, this one wearing a long brown coat and hid within the skirt of the coat itself.

Eventually the man passed by an open doorway and the Ghost felt a pull to its right. It floated out from the skirt of the coat and up near the ceiling of the hallway, where the wall met the ceiling and moved cautiously toward a closed set of double doors. Inside, the Ghost knew, was its guardian.

Inside the morgue.

The Ghost happily found that the morgue was locked with a simple card reader, and sprayed a few data packets at the primitive machine. When the door unlocked, it managed to push one of the doors open after nudging the handle, and looked around inside the room. One wall to it's left was dominated by small metal doors. Refrigeration units, the Ghost thought. To keep corpses from decaying before and after they were examined. On the wall directly opposite the double doors was a Formica shelf, with a large stainless steel basin that had a slow drip from the faucet. To the right were a couple of desks, each scattered with paper work. There were no people, fortunately, as any staff had gone home for the evening, or perhaps were on break.

But there in the center of the room, under a large light fixture was the reason the Ghost was had made its centuries long journey.

Lying on a stainless steel table, under a sheet was a girl. She was tall, and lanky with dark, curly hair that would have hung to her lower back if she had been standing. Her dark eyes were cloudy with death and stared unseeingly at the light above her and her skin was as white as the sheet she was covered with. As the Ghost scanned her body, it noted that an autopsy had been performed, and her inner organs were all… mixed up. Some had been removed. Her blood had been drained as well.

The ghost sighed with false aggravation as it got to work restoring the girl's organs back and sealing shut the autopsy incision. Her eyes cleared, color returned to her flesh as blood was recreated and resumed flowing. Finally, it fixed a few degraded spots in her brain, before infusing her with the light it carried.

And with a shuttering breath, the girl was restored to life.

Then she sat up, and screamed.

My last memory was one of pain. All encompassing pain. Mental, emotional, physical pain, all rolled up into one.

Things had been looking up for me which made it all the worse. Ever since I had started high school, I had been the target of a bullying campaign perpetuated by my former best friend, Emma...something. I'm having a hard time remembering names. It didn't matter now, anyway.

Emma and I had been best friends for as long as I could really remember. We were like sisters and we hung out pretty much all the time. Our families were close too, and my dad, and her dad striking up a friendship. Our mothers never seemed to hit it off, but they were always friendly.

Even after my mom died, Emma was probably the only reason I kept a hold of myself. Her and her mother cared for me and my dad until we were able to function. Emma let me cry on her shoulder doing her very best to calm me down.

But the summer before we started high school, my dad sent me off to summer camp. It lasted two weeks, and I was excited to share my experiences with my best friend. I could barely contain my excitement the day I got back and walked to Emma's house. Imagine how I felt when she told me to go away and slammed the door in my face.

I was indignant at first, not understanding what was happening as I pounded on the door and demanded an explanation. But Emma just shouted at me to go away from the other side of the heavy wooden door. She said that she didn't like me any more.

That walk home took forever. When I got there, my dad asked me what was wrong and I replied "Nothing," and drifted up to my bedroom. I suppose that's where my relationship with him finally fell apart. Yeah, he had been distant and… broken for lack of a better word since my mom had died, but he was healing. So was I. But with Emma's sudden betrayal of our friendship, I didn't want to tell him.

That doesn't really matter now though.

When school started that fall, things got worse. I was introduced to Emma's new friend, and most likely the reason she decided to throw our friendship away like so much rubbish. Her name was Sophia. She was black, and tall. Almost as tall as me, but she was toned and athletic.

Things started small. A few harsh words. A nasty name. Maybe pushing me in the hallway or smacking the schoolbooks out of my arms. Eventually they picked up a third member of their little clique and things got worse.

They escalated to destroying my personal effects. My mothers flute, one of the few prized things she left me had been broken by Emma and thrown into the dumpster behind the school. Then, when she told me it was there and I went to get it, she and Sophia had either lied to me, or gotten it before me and gotten rid of it.

In middle school I was on the honor roll for my grades. But thanks to the efforts of my three bullies, I was barely passing high school. They would steal my assignments and turn them in as their own, or destroy them. I missed classes because they would pour juice and soda on me, forcing me to go home to change clothes and shower.

This lasted for a year and a half. Then, after Christmas vacation my sophomore year, things just stopped. School resumed after the new year and the entire day went by without so much as a nasty look from any of them. My spirits started to lift and I even started to hope. Maybe they had gotten tired of any lack of a reaction from me, or maybe they had another target finally. It didn't matter.

I had gone to my locker to drop off my books at the end of the day when I noticed the smell. Coppery, and rotten, the scent assaulted my nostrils and I almost vomited then and there. I decided to ignore it; I just needed to drop off my stuff and I could leave.

But I was horrified when I opened my locker and the smell got worse. Used tampons and sanitary napkins rolled out on to the floor around my feet and I felt my gorge rise. I never got to vomit though, as a hand grabbed a fist full of my hair and shoved me into my own locker. I was seeing stars as my forehead smashed into the back wall and was unable to do anything as my attacker slammed the door behind me.

I twisted frantically in the locker, vomiting from the smell even as I pounded on the door and begged to be let out. My only response was Sophia's and Emma's laughter as they walked away.

I don't know how long I was trapped in the locker. But my hands started to bleed from hitting the metal and my abdomen ached from trying to throw up anything though my stomach was empty. I hadn't thought that the bullying could get any worse. I was wrong.

Eventually a sort of calm over took me. I simply didn't care anymore. Even though my left arm ached, and even though my heart fluttered in my chest like a dying butterfly. I simply stopped caring. Then, all I could hear was white noise, and my vision faded away.

I died in that locker. Emma and Sophia and the third girl had killed me.

So, imagine my surprise when I woke up again. I was laying on something cold, and I could feel a thin sheet covering my nudity. A bright light fixture was shining directly in my eyes, but I couldn't close them. I also couldn't breathe.

But somehow I was aware. There was what appeared to be a floating robot over me, sending streams of what looked like data up and down my body out of a lens on its front. About the size of a softball, it was a light gray color and had eight spines, the back four rotating clockwise before reversing direction. In the middle of its lens was a glowing blue diamond.

Eventually, I was able to take a deep, shuddering breath and I sat up.

"You're alive!" the small robot exclaimed. Its voice was smooth and feminine, and it reminded me of my mom.

I responded by screaming at the top of my lungs.

The robot made shushing noises and turned back to look at the doors into the room.

I screamed again, and my hands flared with heat and orange light. The metal of the table in my grip began to warp and soften, quickly followed by liquifying in my hands. I yanked my hands away as if burned even though I felt nothing from the molten metal.

The robot snapped at me, "Stop that!" It turned back to the double doors to what I was rapidly realizing to be a morgue and began to spray more data at the card reader. "Follow me, we need to get out of here before someone comes."

I sat on the table, blinking and trying to gather my thoughts. Everything I could remember was a jumble and I couldn't recall anything about… anything. Faces floated through my memory; a sneering dark skinned girl...Sophia. A balding man with a sad expression on his face. A severe looking woman with a bob cut hair style. I put a hand to my temple and shook my head, as if that would organize my mind.

"Come on, hurry!" the robot said.

I looked up and glowered. "What? No, hold on a minute. You need to tell me what's going on here!" I snapped.

The robot sighed, which was odd, since it was a robot. It floated up and peered out the small circular window in the door. Then it floated back my way. The lens in the center of its occulus pointed up to the right, as if it was trying to gather its thoughts. "I am your ghost," it finally said. "And you are my guardian."

There was a pregnant pause, as if the robot, Ghost, thought that it's statement explained everything. I suppose that it did to the ghost. But to me, it told me nothing.

"But I died!" I insisted. "I was dead…"

"Yes. You were dead for 188 hours and 21 minutes."

I blinked as I did the quick mental math. "I was dead for almost eight days!?" I shouted.

Ghost 'shushed' me, but bobbed as if nodding. "And they did an autopsy on you." it said.

"...and now… I'm alive again?"

"I can do that." Ghost said smugly.

I was about to ask it what a Guardian was, when it darted back to the window in the door. It peered out then sprayed another stream of data at the card reader, locking the doors again. It turned to look at me. "There's a problem."

I stood up from the table, taking the sheet with me and wrapping it around me to preserve my modesty. I walked to the doors, taking position opposite Ghost. Distantly, I noticed that my movement was much more graceful than I remembered, my bare feet making no noise on the tiled floor. "What's going on?" I asked.

"We took too long," Ghost said. I thought I heard a note of accusation in its voice. "Now, there are law enforcement officers on the other side of the door. We need a plan."

Taking care to avoid being seen, I peered through the window on my door. Out in the hallway, I could see armored SWAT members taking up positions around corners and in doorways. Behind them were normal cops behind desks and whatever cover they could find. "I could just explain the situation-" I started.

"Unknown parahuman," One of the men in the hall interrupted me. "We've notified the PRT. You are out numbered, and trapped. Surrender now, or we will use force. You have thirty seconds to comply."

I frowned. Once again I was being steamrolled by an authority figure and suddenly I was able to place one of the people in my memory. Principal Blackwell, at my… highschool? She did the same thing to me, when I went to her for help with getting bullied. Part of me wanted to turn myself in, but a small and new, rebellious part of me said' fuck that'.

I looked at Ghost again. "Okay, maybe not. Thoughts?" I asked.

Ghost's occulus glowed briefly. "I will unlock the door. As soon as I do, you need to rush them, and subdue them."

"What?" I asked, confused. How exactly did Ghost want me to take down… I counted ten grown men and women on the other side of the door. "How? Do I use my powers, or-"

Ghost interrupted me. "Yes." It turned toward the card reader and sprayed another data stream at it and the door unlocked with a click. "Go! Now!"

Despite wanting to argue, I followed Ghost's command. I flung the door open hard enough to imbed it in the wall of the corridor and dashed toward the nearest person, a SWAT member. I could almost feel time slow down as adrenaline flooded my body and I took stock of the situation.

There were two swat officers taking up cover positions at the end of the hallway, one each to the left and right in opposite alcoves, and two more behind a desk at the far end with four normal officers behind them. Judging by their expressions, I must have taken them by surprise as I rushed the one on the right. My body seemed to be following a new set of instincts as I automatically twisted sideways to reduce my profile, rubber bullets and beanbag rounds missing me completely.

As I reached the first officer, I put one hand around the barrel of his shotgun and the other in the crook of his right elbow. I stepped into his space, folding his arm and locking it, then pivoting to my right I slammed him face first into the door jamb. I made sure to keep a hold of the shotgun as the officer crumpled to the floor like a puppet with it's strings cut.

Without pausing I zeroed in on the SWAT officer across the hall from me. His reactions were still way too slow to be natural and I started to realize that my powers were much more than the fire I demonstrated earlier. He had been turning toward me and was currently sighting down his own shotgun directly at my center mass. Thinking quickly, I whipped the sheet covering me off and threw it in the air so that it created temporary cover before dashing around it and directly at the SWAT officer. I smashed the stock of the shot gun into his visor, then brought my knee up into his midsection. He collapsed with a wheeze and reality sped back up.

I leaned into the alcove for cover as the other cops started shouting in their panic. I had just brought down two trained SWAT officers in moments, my body seemingly acting of its own accord, and I wasn't even winded. "What the hell was that?" I hissed at Ghost.

Ghost ignored me and looked me up and down. "Oh! You're naked now. This won't do."

It began to spray data at me, scanning me from head to toe. "Focus!" I snapped.

"Sorry sorry!" Ghost said hurriedly. It seemed to finish it's scan. "Right, this may feel weird."

Ghost dissolved into a cloud of particles and surrounded me, materializing into a suit of armor. It was a black body glove with gunmetal gray composite plates covering my vitals and joints. A helmet materialized around my head with a face plate that I looked through and a white, duster-like coat covered it all. A few lines of script typed themselves across the visor, which I took to mean some kind of boot up sequence. Finally, I could feel prickling sensations all over as a sort of… heads-up-display appeared on the visor.

"What the…?" I muttered. At this point I had more questions than answers but there was no way I could slow down enough to ask them. Not with the entirety of the police department and PRT about to fall on me.

"It's armor," Ghost helpfully supplied. It's voice seemed to come from inside my head. "I brought it with me, just for you. How do you feel?"

"Weird." I answered. And it was the truth. I felt energized and powerful. And even more than that, I knew almost everything about the armor, ranging from how to maintain it and how it worked, to how to upgrade it. I flexed my hands experimentally, feeling the raw power in them. "I feel almost invincible. Like I could lift a car and run really really fast."

"Well, you can, but you're not invincible." Ghost replied. "So please be careful. I can fix you, but it's not easy."

I nodded, steeling my nerves for what was to come. For better or worse, from the moment Ghost revived me on that table in the morgue, I started down a path that I wasn't sure I wanted to travel. I needed answers, but I knew damn well that I would not get them from the police I needed to fight through. I had already assaulted two of them, and from the growing orange glow radiating from the morgue behind me, probably set the police department on fire from my initial panic.

What followed was a whirlwind of violence and pain. I did my best to minimize casualties, but I left bodies behind me with broken bones, contusions and burns as I fled from the police station, exploding through the front doors of the building in a burst of flame and debris.

Moments later, about half a mile away I made my way to the rooftops and turned back toward the way I just fled from. In the gloom of the night I could make out the glow of the Brockton Bay Police Department burning to the ground. The sirens of the emergency crews echoed through alleyways and off of buildings as they rushed to the scene. And I knew it was all my fault.

Strangely enough, I couldn't bring myself to care. Because for better or worse, Taylor Hebert was dead and gone. Only I remained.

"What can you tell me about my powers?" I asked, turning toward the fire escape. I needed to get to ground, and find a place to hunker down for the night.

"I thought you'd never ask!"

Yay!?

I could always use a beta editor. If'n youre interested, PM me.

Last edited: Dec 2, 2018

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SniperFrog

Nov 30, 2016

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SniperFrog

SniperFrog

Right between the eyes.

Dec 6, 2016

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#56

The three of them were in briefing room two, waiting for the Director to join them. The topic of discussion was the evening's event at the police station.

Armsmaster stood at the end of the table furthest from the entrance to the roo, by the white board. As always, his blue and silver armor was impeccably clean, his beard trimmed and neat. A blue dry-erase marker squeaked as he made notes about everything he could remember since he had been the first Protectorate hero on the scene. As leader of the Wards team, Aegis was also in attendance. He sat to to Armsmaster's right, his helmet off and on the table in front of him. His rust colored costume was dirty and scuffed as a result of an altercation on patrol earlier in the evening.

Miss Militia sat at the end of the table closest to the entrance of the room, a steaming cup of coffee warming her hands. She had no need of the caffeine to stay awake, since she needed no sleep, but she truly enjoyed the bitter taste. She savored another sip before replacing her American flag patterned bandanna that she used to cover her lower face in lieu of a mask.

She arrived with the first squad of PRT troops when they received the call about a parahuman infiltrating the police station, and she was there to provide her account of the incident. The three heroes had been in the room for about ten minutes now, and she had mostly tuned the other two out as she mentally recounted what she would need to report, but she listened in as Aegis told Armsmaster about his altercation with some Merchant gang members that evening.

"-and that's when I had Vista block me in with the suspected gang members while she escaped with the victims." Aegis said.

Armsmaster nodded, making another note on the board.

Stranger? Possible invisibility

Drone = tinker? Possible specialization – reanimating granting powers. Trump.

"Go on," the tinker said, "What happened next?"

Aegis paused, rubbing the back of his neck, "I had no idea that Mush was there. I guess he hid when Vista and I arrived. We weren't exactly stealthy."

Armsmaster made another note.

Powers granted to cadaver

Pyrokinesis, EMP?

Speed, strength, teleportation?

Durability

Also, tinker made armor Why?

"Was this before of after you called in to console?" Armsmaster asked. He tapped the bottom of the marker on his chin as he thought.

"After," Aegis replied. "I reported the mugging, Kid Win checked in with Assault who gave the go-ahead to engage."

Armsmaster made another note.

No serious injuries.

Then, he nodded and turned to face the Ward. "You made the right call," he said. Aegis beamed at the rare praise from the Protectorate ENE leader. "You had no way of knowing Mush was with them. He wears no costume after all, and he is easy to mistake for a normal gang member.

"However," he went on, "you did not report his presence immediately."

Aegis frowned and looked down at the table. "No sir, sorry," he sighed. Miss Militia could tell the boy was disappointed with himself. "I was more concerned with making sure he didn't go after the civilians."

"You did well, Carlos," Miss Militia said, interrupting Armsmaster. She ignored his frown and smiled at Aegis warmly. "The Wards are about learning how to conduct yourself as a hero that the people can look up to. You'll do better next time."

Aegis looked at her and smiled gratefully. "Yes ma'am, thank you."

Armsmaster nodded with a hum of agreement, turning back to the white board to make another note.

Hebert girl's father – tell, or no?

"I'm more concerned with why Vista did not call it in," he continued. He paused to survey his notes for a moment then nodded, seemingly satisfied with them. He replaced the dry-erase marker and stepped away from the board then began to tinker with something on his vambrace. "She has been a Ward longer than anyone else on the team. She should have known better."

Aegis took a breath, perhaps to defend his teammate, but was interrupted when the Director entered the room. She was followed closely by the captain of the responding PRT squad, Hector Rodriguez.

Director Piggot could only be described as large. She was heavy set, with her blond hair cut in a severe bob style. Her suit fit her well despite her size, but Miss Militia could tell that Director Piggot was pained with every step she took. Her kidneys were failing. The woman took a seat at the conference table with a barely perceptible sigh.

In a lesson of contrasts, Captain Rodriguez was the peak of physical condition. He had divested himself of his armor, but remained in his PRT issued uniform. His hair was uniformly short, and his steely eyes set above a crooked nose. He took an 'at ease' position to the Directors right.

"So, details," Director Piggot said. "What happened tonight at the police station?"

Armsmaster stood straighter, and activated a wrist mounted projector in his arm brace. Showing what he was tinkering with. A projector screen automatically came down to the right of the white board, and Armsmaster pointed his wrist at it. "This is the security footage of tonight's incident. It begins at ten seventeen p.m., approximately five minutes before the parahuman, codenamed 'Necromancer' enters the room."

On the screen, a color video began to play. It showed the morgue from one of the corners of the room near the ceiling of the left of the entrance. A thin man with brown hair and wearing a lab coat and goggles stepped away from the table where Taylor Hebert's body was laying, it's arms and legs straight.

"The man is Doctor Miles Samson. He is on retainer with the Brockton Bay Police from Brockton Bay General as the primary coroner." Armsmaster explained. Back on screen, Doctor Samson left the examining table and went to his desk, discarding the latex gloves he was wearing. He made a few notes on his computer, then scanned his I.D. card and left the room.

"Where is he going?" the Director asked.

"According to his own words, he left to get a cup of coffee," Miss Militia explained. "He is currently in interrogation room one waiting on questioning."

Director Piggot nodded, satisfied. "Good," she said. "Please continue."

Armsmaster resumed the video. "Here," he began to explain, "we will fast forward until the first evidence of 'Necromancer'.

The video sped up, then resumed normal speed just moments before the door opened and a small, grapefruit-sized drone hovered in.

"Wait," the Director said. Armsmaster paused the video and the Director gestured at the screen. "That's the parahuman?"

Frowning, Armsmaster explained. "No, I apologize. The drone is the only evidence we have of a parahuman," he said. He then pointed to one of his notes on the whiteboard. "It is why I have assigned 'Necromancer' an initial classification of Tinker. What happens next is where I decided on Trump."

Director Piggot waved her hand, "Continue."

Nodding, Armsmaster resumed the video. The drone hovered over the cadaver, streams of white light scanning up and down the body. This was Miss Militia's first time viewing the video herself, and she mirrored the Director's shock as Hebert's body sat up.

"Oh my god," she muttered.

The cadaver's hands then flared with bright light, and the camera feed was suddenly filled with static. "Something about the pyrokinesis powers exhibited by the reanimated cadaver has an EMP effect," Armsmaster explained. "I theorize that the cadaver isn't just utilizing heat or combustion, but actual solar radiation. Scans of the police office confirm this."

"The responding medical personnel also confirm," Miss Militia chimed in. "The burns on the officers were consistent with sunburns, but to the extreme."

"Was there any radiation poisoning?" the Director asked.

"No ma'am," Armsmaster answered.

The Director nodded, and Armsmaster resumed the video. "Unfortunately, there are no cameras in the hall leading to the morgue. The view from the next best camera is not optimal, but it is sufficient."

On the screen, a few from the office looking into the hall at the morgue appeared. Miss Militia saw the arrayed officers in their positions of cover and recognized their weapons. Everything from MP5 sub machine guns to the iconic Remington 12 gauge shot gun were represented, and Miss Militia knew that they would be loaded with non-lethal ammunition, until the officers were ordered otherwise.

They watched as the reanimated cadaver burst from the room, the camera's resolution and framerate insufficient to capture just how fast it was moving as it mercilessly dispatched the two men in the hallway.

Armsmaster paused the video again. "One point two three seconds is all the time it took for the cadaver to remove those two men from the field," he explained.

"How badly were they hurt?" the Director asked.

"The first man suffered a serious concussion and a hyper extended elbow joint," Captain Rodriguez supplied. "The second also suffered a concussion, though minor, however his sternum was crushed through his flack vest."

Director Piggot's face was grim as she gestured to Armsmaster to continue the playback. He did so, continuing to add his own observations. "It is at this point we see the cadaver emerge from cover wearing what appears to be advanced tinker armor. It is unknown why 'Necromancer' would protect the cadaver, however the armor obviously increased it's combat potency.

"Unfortunately, the video continues to degrade, as the cadaver continued to utilize the solar and heat powers which caused the EMP effect," Armsmaster finished.

He continued to let the video play, however. On screen, the cadaver whirled, flinging fire, bursts of force and rounds from it's stolen shotgun. Beanbags and rubber bullets impacted against it, but were absorbed by some kind of kinetic shield. At one point they witnessed the cadaver fling a wooden desk weighing what had to be almost five hundred pounds across the office, crushing one armored swat officer beneath its weight.

"No one was hurt from that?" Aegis blurted. "How!?"

"No one was critically injured," Armsmaster clarified. "Panacea was called, and there were no irreversible injuries."

Eventually, the video was completely static as the cadaver burst through the entrance doors in a fiery nova. Armsmaster turned his wrist mounted projector off and turned to face the director along with everyone else in the room.

Director Piggot was silent and pensive for a moment before speaking.

"What I want to know is 'why?'" she began. "Why would this parahuman go to such lengths to empower and steal a corpse?"

"If I may, ma'am, I have a theory?" Miss Militia said.

Director Piggot gestured for her to go again.

"In the coroner's report, he noted that Taylor Hebert may have had the potential to be, or was already a parahuman." Miss Militia began. "Her brain had the telltale scarring and growth consistent with other parahumans he had done autopsies on."

"So you think they may be collecting parahuman corpses?" the Director asked, a note of incredulity in her voice.

Silence answered her.

The Director sighed. "Regardless, we need to be on the look out for this… 'Necromancer'," she said. "Captain, inform the rest of the troops. Aegis, gather the Wards."

Aegis nodded before he and Captain Rodriguez exited the room.

"Miss Militia, I'll leave it to you to brief the rest of the Protectorate, and I will report it to the other Directors. I assume you already have something in mind as a counter measure, Armsmaster?"

Armsmaster nodded. "I do, Director," he answered.

"Then get to it. Dismissed."

oOOo

I made sure to stay long enough to make sure the fire was put out. Despite feeling apathetic toward others, I still didn't want anyone to die. And besides, the police were still important to the well being of the city.

Turning away once I was sure the fire crews had things well in hand, I made my way to the edge of the roof. I had a few different priorities now, and all were equally important.

For one, I needed to find shelter. This one was easy enough, fortunately. Brockton Bay had long ago begun falling apart, and there was no shortage of abandoned warehouses and office buildings. If I was lucky enough, or ruthless enough to evict the current squatters, I might even find an abandoned condo or apartment.

Second I needed to learn about my powers. Looking at my escape from the police station, I was rather lucky. My powers were on auto pilot and I didn't really need to know what I was doing. I was lucky that no one died, and I was lucky that they couldn't stop me.

I knew I was smart. Back in school, before those three had started tormenting me, learning was easy. I excelled, and my mind was very detail oriented. If I knew more about my powers, I could maximize my effectiveness in whatever it was I chose to do.

Third, I needed to gather supplies and weapons. I still had the shotgun I had taken from the first unfortunate SWAT officer I took out, but I needed others. My powers seemed to be telling me that I had a natural aptitude for gun handling now, and the shotgun felt at home in my grip. I knew that my accuracy would be impeccable no matter what gun I chose, but something was telling me I needed something more powerful, and one handed. A pistol of some kind.

Finally, I needed a plan. A long-term goal. I had powers now, and despite the holes I was discovering in my memory, I still remembered being a girl and wishing I was Alexandria, or… that tinker from Canada.

I had always wanted powers, and I wanted to do good with them. Now though? I was too world-weary at too young to know that heroes always won, but I still wanted to do good.

Fortunately I could take care of two items on my list immediately; find shelter and learn about my powers.

"So, tell me what I can do now," I said to Ghost as I began to climb back down the building. The fire escape rattled slightly as I descended.

"Well for one, you can move a lot more efficiently in a vertical direction, now," Ghost replied. I swore I could hear a hint of snark in it's voice.

"Okay..." I murmured, and I stopped about half way down. "Meaning…?"

Ghost materialized hovering in front of me. "All guardians have the ability to utilize the Light to enhance their movement," it explained. "You were doing it back at the police station; I believe it's called 'blinking', when you teleport a set distance in one direction."

I thought back to my escape, and yes; I did indeed teleport. Usually in the direction of my next target and followed with a blast of force or fire. But consciously I didn't know how I did that. I voiced my concerns.

"Well, first you have to gather the Light. Then you will it to move you in the direction you want to go!"

I stared at Ghost, my expression beneath the visor of my helmet a flat stare.

"What?" Ghost asked. It seemed genuinely confused by my reaction.

"Okay, first?" I began, "What is 'Light'?"

Ghost hovered a few feet further away from me and turned to look upward at the moon. It hung there in the clear night sky, silvery and in its waxing gibbous phase. It would be full in a few days. Ghost took a moment of genuflection then turned back to me.

"Light is… life," It said, "The opposite of Light is Darkness, like the opposite of life is death. Light is found in everything that is alive. Plants, people, animals, it doesn't matter."

"That sounds like the Force," I mumbled.

"The what?"

I waved the comment away. "Never mind. Please continue."

"Anyway!" Ghost went on. "Despite light coming from everything, certain beings embody the Light more than others, but none more than the Traveler. I am of and from the Traveler and it sent me to find you."

Ghost's brief explanation raised more questions than it answered, but I vowed not to be distracted. "Okay, and what does the Light do?" I asked.

"The Light empowers your abilities. Using it, you can move faster, jump higher, teleport… oh and it powers your Solar abilities."

Holding my hand with the palm up, I concentrated a moment on the feeling of the fire I wielded back in the police station, and a sun in miniature formed about an inch above my curved fingers. It shone as fiercely as the real thing, bathing the alley I was currently above in a warm orange glow. I instinctively knew that this 'Solar' fire could be molded and held great destructive power, but I also knew that, like the sun, it could give life.

I flung it down below me at an innocent dumpster. On impact, the miniature sun expanded to eight feet in diameter turning the dumpster into a pile of glowing slag in an instant.

Hm.

"So this Light, it comes from the Traveler?" I asked, facing Ghost again. It bobbed in the air, like it's own version of a nod. "Is that what you used to bring me back to life?"

My voice cracked as I finished the sentence. I was still deeply uncomfortable about my own death and resurrection, but Ghost either didn't notice, or pretended not to.

"Yes, it is," Ghost replied. "But only when I'm full of it."

I couldn't help myself.

"Oh, you're full of it alright..." I muttered.

"I heard that," Ghost said flatly.

"Sorry."

"Oh good, my Guardian is a comedian. Ha. Ha ha. Ha."

Clearing my throat and trying not to laugh, I steered the conversation back on track. "So if I were to die again, you could bring me back, again?"

"Of course!" Ghost said enthusiastically. "But again, only when I'm recharged. I used a lot of it the first time."

I figured I could practice and travel at the same time as Ghost answered my questions. Focusing on the lip of the rooftop across the alley, willing this… 'Light' to take me there. There was a rushing sensation and then I was up above the roof top, probably ten feet. I admit, I panicked a bit, but with a hissing sound at my feet, I floated slowly down and landed lightly. Ghost hovered up to meet me.

"Hey, good job!" it encouraged when it caught up.

"Thanks," I said, smiling beneath my helmet. I may have just met Ghost, but praise was scarce for me, and I was happy to have genuine praise when it came my way. Even if it came from a softball sized robot.

I walked to the far edge of the building, gauging the distance to the next one. It looked to be about fifteen feet, the alley dropping away four stories below. I backed up to get a running start and build up my confidence. "How long before you recharge?" I asked.

I didn't give Ghost a chance to respond, I sprinted to the roof edge and jumped. My initial momentum took me about halfway, and I focused on recreating the floating ability. I could hear the hissing noise again I glided the rest of the way and further, lighting gently in the middle of the next roof over. Turning back to Ghost, I beckoned it over.

Ghost floated across the gap. "Looks like you have the hang of moving around," It said. "But if you're gonna keep doing that, I'm gonna put myself away."

It dissolved into a cloud of data and faded into my armor, and once again I could hear Ghost as if it were in my head.

"Anyway, as for recharging..." Ghost trailed off as I backed up to get running room again. "Probably a few days, actually."

Running to the edge and jumping, I asked, "Why?"

This time I focused on gliding as far and as long as I could. I made it across the next building and flew almost to the other side of the one across from that when the hissing cut out and I plummeted into the alley. I looked up and on reflex blinked to the roof top. I was beginning to enjoy that.

"Because," Ghost answered, "We recharge from the Traveler, but here… we're so far from her."

"Where is she?" I asked.

"Earth, but not this Earth," Ghost replied.

"So, like Earth Aleph?"

"Earth what?"

"Earth Aleph is another earth in an alternate reality," I explained. "Some crazy cape ripped a small hole in between our realities a few years back and we trade things. It's not big enough for a person to go through, but we can exchange information and such. Their history is like ours up until the… eighties I think, but then we got Capes and they didn't."

"I'm pretty sure it's not Aleph then," Ghost said. "Where the Traveler is, the Last City is far more technologically advanced than what I've seen here."

"About that," I said hesitantly. "I have these… schematics… in my head. Guns… vehicles… armor."

I could feel Ghost's excitement in my head. "Oh! You may be a 'smith!" it exclaimed.

"What's a smith?"

"Occasionally the Traveler would grant an individual knowledge about technology far beyond mundane understanding. We call them 'smiths'. Gunsmiths, shipsmiths, armorsmiths and such."

"That sounds like Tinkers here," I said. "I'm a Tinker too?"

"I suppose," Ghost responded. "If that's what you want to call it. 'Tinker' makes it sound like you don't know what you're doing."

"Well… I don't. Not really."

The next jump was made in silence. When I landed, I spoke again. "You mentioned my 'Solar' abilities. Like I could have others. What did you mean?"

"Well, there are three types of para-causal energies that the Traveler taught people to use. Guardians can naturally use them without the aid of technology. They are Solar, which is what you used earlier, Void and Arc."

The next building was across the street instead of just an alley. As I glided across, I looked down and saw a few people. Mostly vagrants and gang members, but a few had cell phones that they hurriedly extracted to get a few photos or videos of my passing. I put them out of my mind for now.

"How do I use them?" I asked.

"I… don't know," Ghost confessed.

It must have felt my irritation because it said, "I'm sorry. The Traveler sent me to be your companion and assistant, but it didn't give me the whole picture, I'm afraid. It wanted you to learn."

"What is the Traveler anyway?"

"The Traveler is..." Ghost said, trailing off. "She travels the galaxy, finding civilizations and uplifting them with knowledge and the Light. Then, when she and they have learned all they can, she moves on."

As fortunate as I was to have been given powers, I still wished the Traveler had chosen here to visit. Brockton Bay was a shit hole, but then, perhaps that's why I was given Ghost.

I continued to make my way across the rooftops toward the section of town that had the most abandoned buildings. Most of them were warehouses or factories which had fallen on hard times when the economy collapsed. I personally had never been there, but I had heard of it from… someone. The sad, balding man, I think. Regardless, that area was to the north of where I was. Around the intersection of Broadway and 9th avenue.

It wasn't too long before I came across my first crime in progress. I almost passed it by since I had other priorities, but then, I knew I had always wanted to be a hero. I stopped my roof hopping on the corner of a tax building and peered down at them.

Three men had trapped a woman against the side of the building. The men looked like they belonged to the E88, a racist gang that emphasized white supremacy. One had a shaved head, while the other two had buzz cuts. They all sported tattoos proclaiming their allegiance to their gang and other various racist things. One even had a tattoo along his neck that simply said 'Racist' and this one was brandishing a knife at the woman.

How stupid could he be?

The woman didn't look like she was a minority. She had light caramel colored skin and red hair. The only article of clothing I could see was a long, buttoned up coat. Her purse had been snatched from her and it's contents dumped out. A tube of dark red lipstick had been crushed at some point and the smear looked like blood in the gloom.

Once I had a plan of attack, I dropped to the side of the group.

Now, a lot of heroes would posture uselessly. They would say things like, "Stop evil doer!" and "In the name of justice" and all that.

But not me.

I merely attacked.

The first thug, the bald one, was sent tumbling away from a double force palm to his chest. He rolled and flipped for about twelve yards before his skull against a light post stopped his momentum. As I turned to the next thug, the one with a knife and the'Racist' tattoo.

As I turned, I felt my stolen shotgun materialize in my hands. Two quick beanbags to the thugs center mass staggered him but did not put him down. I flipped the shotgun, taking hold of the barrel and swung it like a golf club. It impacted his lower jaw with a 'crack' and sent him down like a sack of potatoes.

The third thug must have had good reflexes because he had managed to pull a powerful looking revolver from his waistband. I didn't know the model of the gun, but my power supplied that it was at least. .50 caliber. Still, I knew my armor's shield could take a few hits before going down, and they did; the thug squeezed off two rounds before I made it to him.

Thrusting my arm out, a lance of Solar energy burst from my palm and practically cooked the man where he stood. The force of the hit threw him in the direction of the bald thug and tumbled like a rag-doll down the sidewalk.

When he stopped, he didn't get up.

I turned to look at the woman who was staring at me with undisguised terror.

So I turned, and ran.

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SniperFrog

Dec 6, 2016

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SniperFrog

SniperFrog

Right between the eyes.

Dec 23, 2016

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#89

This one is un-beta'd. I dont know what my beta's holiday schedule is like, but I'm impatient like a kid on Christmas morning, and I wanted to post it for you all. Enjoy!

I ran for what felt like forever.

The street around me blurred but I wouldn't have seen it anyway, so focused was I on what I had just done. In my minds eye, I could still see that gang member's face, the horror and disbelief etched in his expression as I used a lethal attack on him.

But it wasn't that I had taken a life. No, it was that I had done it without hesitation. It was how easy the act was. The moment that man had fired on me, I reacted. Instead of the concussive force that I had used on the other two, or even the solar blasts to the legs or arms that I had utilized on the police to disable them, I had unleashed a burst of solar energy to his torso. Directly at his heart.

I had struck to kill.

The woman's panic did not help either.

Eventually I could hear Ghost calling for me. It had materialized outside of my armor the instant I had run away from the scene and it floated desperately after me. But I was so much faster than it, and it was only after I slowed to a stop, lighting on top of a three level apartment building that it was able to catch up.

It floated up to eye level with me and I found I could not meet it's… eye. Occulus. Whatever. I couldn't look at it. Instead, I looked down to my left, down at the street below us. Back the way I came, I could distantly hear sirens, and I thought that the lady I had saved must have called the police.

Ghost waited until I glanced back up at it before speaking.

"Why did you run?" it asked.

I was silent for a moment, gaping at Ghost from behind my visor. "What-?" I started. "What do you mean, 'why did I run?' I killed that man!"

"Yes, you did," Ghost said succinctly. "You actually killed the first one too."

Ghost's words landed on me like bricks. Two lives taken by my hands. I could still see the first man's body flailing like a rag doll against the light pole. It was only my first night out as a hero, a guardian. My first night back from the dead and already I had screwed up so badly. Even given a second chance, I was still a failure. I held my hands up and stared at the palms, wondering 'why me?'

My self pity party was interrupted when the handgun the gang member had wielded against me appeared in my hands in a haze of white colored static. It's handle had a dark wood grip, and there were still four rounds in the cylinder. A smear of soot was at the end of the long barrel but the rest of the gun gleamed in the dim streetlights. It felt right in my hands, like it belonged there. But despite that it still felt like a reminder of my failure. My ineptitude.

"I never did tell you what Guardian's are, did I?" Ghost asked.

I shook my head, no.

"Long story short; Guardians are weapons," it said. "They were created by the Traveler when she was wounded. To defend her, to defend the people against the darkness."

"What is the darkness?" I asked. I placed the hand cannon against the belt that cinched my coat to my waist, and something kept it there. Magnets maybe? It didn't matter.

Ghost turned away from me, looking back the way I had fled. In the distance I could make out the pinprick lights of police cars arriving at the lady's location. Ghost was silent for a moment then it said, "The darkness is evil. It seeks to consume the light, take the light for itself. It almost succeeded, but when the Traveler was wounded, she managed to repel the darkness. Then, she created the us, the Ghosts, to find our guardians."

What Ghost was saying sounded like a fairy tale. Good versus Evil, black and white, one decision or the other. I wasn't that old, but even with only fifteen years, almost sixteen under my belt, I knew the world didn't work that way. Everything was shades of gray. In school, there was a large gang presence. All three of the gangs recruited from the student body, though to be fair, the Merchants didn't so much recruit as got you hooked on their product and you were then kind of assimilated. But still, there was always a reason someone joined whether it was peer pressure, forced recruitment, or nowhere else to turn.

That wasn't to say that there wasn't evil out there. I could name too many villains that seemed to do bad things for the hell of it.

"What does that have to do with the man… men I killed?" I whispered.

"Everything. The darkness isn't just a concept, Guardian. It's a tangible, physical thing. And it can't be subdued."

Ghost paused.

"Only destroyed."

It made sense in a morbid sort of way. My powers were lethal because I was a weapon against the darkness. If I was going to be a hero here, and fight the darkness, it would only lead to more deaths by my hand. But if Ghost was to be believed, my powers were versatile. I was sure that with practice and research I could find some way to be non-lethal.

Or at least less lethal.

It was something to think about later. At the moment, I had a goal. I needed to find us a place to stay. I glided back down to street level and headed north west, further into the commercial district. I knew roughly what I wanted in a lair. Or would it be base?

I needed privacy, so ideally the area around would be abandoned or at least sparse.

Second, I needed a place to work, because I was determined to experiment with my powers, as well as my tinker skills.

Finally, I needed a place that was comfortable, or that I could make that way. Ghost had told me that I didn't need sleep, or food, or rest. But honestly, fuck that. I wanted a place to sit dammit.

Eventually, I said, "I suppose you're right."

"Of course I am," Ghost quipped back.

I scoffed.

"You're also full of it."

Ghost blew a raspberry at me, or at least made the noise. It didn't have a tongue after all.

"So, are you okay then?" Ghost asked. It floated sideways, facing me.

I kept looking around and was silent while I thought. Was I okay? The full weight of the situation still hadn't settled yet, and I didn't know how I would react when it did. Or if it did for that matter. I still was not sure the extent of what Ghost did to me.

We had been going full tilt from the moment Ghost revived me in the morgue and I hadn't had the chance to stop yet.

So was I okay?

No, I wasn't. And I said as much.

"No, but I'll adapt."

I could feel Ghost's approval through whatever it was that we shared. The moment was broken when Ghost spotted something.

"Eyes up, Guardian," it told me.

About a block away, in the gloom of a dim streetlight was a sign that read "For Lease". It was covered in gang tags, so thick in some places that I couldn't make out most of what the sign said. The sign was in front of what I assumed to be an old machining shop if the marquis on facade was to be believed. It said "Coors Ceramic Machining".

We approached the front of the building and I wiped some of the haze off of a window that looked inside the main part of the facility. It was dark inside so Ghost activated a flashlight and shone a beam around. Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust, but I could make out various machines that I assumed were used to grind down ceramics, but more than that I had no idea.

Still, I decided to check it out.

We approached the double doors that marked the entrance, and unsurprisingly they were locked. A heavy chain was looped through the two handles, the ends joined by a hefty looking padlock.

"This one's on you, Guardian," Ghost said.

I took the lock in my hand and focused some solar energy into it. The lock melted into so much slag, and I quickly dropped it to the concrete. Quietly, I unlooped the chain from the handles and opened the door.

Stepping into the foyer of the building, I detached my new hand cannon from my belt and I brought it up to ready. I had no idea what might be lurking in this building but there was no such thing as too much caution. The dust on the floor didn't look to have been disturbed save for a few rodent footprints, but parahumans were a thing.

I checked behind the receptionists desk, looking underneath it as well as around it. I didn't see anything so I moved on into the facility proper.

The manufacturing floor wasn't that large, probably a thousand square feet, give or take. The far wall and the walls to my left and right had top hinged windows near the corrugated metal ceiling that let in the dim moonlight through grime caked glass. The floor was covered in an inch thick layer of dust. The machines had dust too, but it covered rust and corrosion; the salt air from being so near the ocean didn't do them any favors. I wasn't going to be able to scavenge any parts from them it seemed.

On the far wall, a staircase went up into a second floor, and windows that overlooked the factory floor. I thought they were probably the foreman's office and I made a mental note to check up there as soon as possible.

I crept around the factory, checking around and even in some of the machines. Most of the machines had bays where the grinding and machining would take place, but all I found was an old rodent nest and stray cat that hissed at me and ran off into the darkness.

To the right of the entrance I had come through were the bathrooms, and I made sure to clear those rooms as well before making my way to the stairs on the back wall. The stairs were made out of diamond checker plate, and went fourteen high before ending in a heavy wooden door with a single reinforced window. I silently made my way up, stepping lightly on each step-

"Kinda spooky in here," Ghost whispered.

My heart leaped into my throat and I must have jumped ten feet in the air.

"God dammit, Ghost!" I hissed.

"Sorry," Ghost replied, sounding anything but. If anything it sounded amused. "It's just too quiet, and I don't mean that ironically."

I sighed and continued up the steps far less silently than before. Any element of stealth or surprise was broken when I was startled. Once at the top of the steps, Ghost shined its light in the small window in the door, but the gloom prevented me from seeing anything, so I kicked the door in. It swung wide and banged loudly against the wall and a cloud of dust rose from the displaced air. I hurried in, my hand cannon raised and ready.

The room was as quiet as the rest of the factory.

I was right, however in that this was the foreman's office. The floor up here was covered in low pile, brown carpet but it may have been another color for all the dust covering it. There was an oak desk in the corner with an older model computer still sitting atop it. A black leather computer chair was pushed in under the desk and there were still files stacked neatly in a wire rack next to the phone.

It seemed like I had lucked out, and the factory was abandoned. I had no idea how long ago it had been put up for lease, but apparently no one had rented it and the owners left it to rot, like the rest of the Bay. I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth however. I pulled out the chair and plopped down in it, raising another cloud of dust. I waved it away, then put my gun on the desk.

Once the air cleared, I reached up and depressed the seals at the base of my helmet, and my suit depressurized with a hissing noise. I pulled my helmet off, and placed it on the desk next to my handgun.

I may not have needed sleep being sustained by the light and all, but I still felt weary. So I kicked my feet up on the desk and leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes. Just for a moment.

"Pleasant dreams, Guardian."

And I was asleep.

ooOOoo

When I next opened my eyes daylight was streaming in through the windows, muted by the grime that covered the glass. In the light the office was dingier than I had first thought, most of the surfaces colored a dusty gray. The stack of documents next to the computer was moldering and discolored and the plastic that composed the components of the computer was yellowed with age. My tinker power told me that I wouldn't get much from it but I decided to try anyway. Later.

First, I needed to scout out my new lair and it's surroundings in the daylight. I couldn't remember ever having been to this area before, but with the holes in my memory that didn't account for much. Then again, I still knew my age; fifteen going on sixteen in June. There would have been no real reason for me to come this deep into the commercial district. It was too far from home and well… too deep into Empire territory.

I stood up and rolled my shoulders to work out the kink that had settled in my neck overnight. It cracked and popped and I sighed with satisfaction.

Ghost chose that moment to glide silently into the office through the ruined doorway. "Good morning, Guardian!" it chirped cheerfully.

"Morning, Ghost," I replied.

"Did you sleep well?" It asked.

I had, and I nodded. In fact, outside of the nasty crick in my neck, I couldn't remember having slept better. My mind was crystal clear, and I felt ready to go. "How long was I out?" I asked in return.

"Just over ten hours."

I hummed noncommittally and retrieved my helmet from where I had left it on the desk. As I brought it up, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the visor. The girl looking back at me was unfamiliar. I recognized my features, sure, but there were differences. My eyes had gone from a light hazel to a yellow the color of the sun and seemed to glow from within. My face had always been thin, and I hated that my eyes were large, and my mouth too wide. Now though, I looked gaunt, and almost sickly. Worse though was my hair.

It was gone.

My hair had been my one redeeming feature. Long and curly, black and shiny, I had prided myself in it. All that remained was stubble, about an eight of an inch long.

I must have looked pained, enough that Ghost quietly said, "It'll grow back, Guardian."

One hand remained on my helmet as a ran the other over the soft stubble. I was silent for a moment more before I said, "No, it's fine."

I stared a moment more before I steeled my expression.

"This is me now."

I placed the helmet over my head and it sealed with a satisfying hiss. I retrieved my handgun as well and spun the cylinder.

"Let's go exploring."

ooOOoo

The factory looked markedly different in the daylight. Grime caked the windows of the factory floor just as badly as the windows in the office upstairs, casting everything in a dim, yellow light. It was still enough to see that almost every available surface had been tagged by the E88 at some point. Most of the paint was old though, and I theorized that no one had been in here in a long time.

I did however discover a small loading dock that I had overlooked the previous night. The rolling overhead door was stuck open about six inches, and I took a moment to close it fully, the act markedly easy with my new strength. I finished the job by spot welding the door shut with my solar powers.

Just in case.

My exploring of the inside revealed no other surprises so I made my way back out to the streets to scout the area. I took to the roofs, which was becoming familiar already and worked my way out in a spiral for about a quarter mile radius.

To my surprise, the area was fairly deserted.

There was little doubt that the area was firmly in Empire control. The gang tags attested to that. But I was certain that I would have seen gang members wandering the streets. Instead, the only suspicious activity I spotted was an unmarked white freight truck that stopped on the side of the street, presumably to look up directions to where he had to deliver.

I watched the truck rumble away, then turn the corner out of sight before floating down to street level. There was no real point in scouting any further, I thought. But that was good. Instead of having to carve out my territory, I could lay low, and defend my base if necessary. I could make supply runs to different locations and draw attention away from where I actually was.

Speaking of…

"Ghost, we need supplies," I said, hopping from factory roof to factory roof. We made it back to my abandoned machine shop in good time, and I went back to my chair.

"Well, you have two options as I see it. You can "acquire" them," Ghost began. I heard the quotation marks around acquire.

It noticed something on the desk and began to scan it, its 'data spray' sweeping back and forth.

"Or you can buy them," Ghost finished. "Both of those options come with a host of problems."

Problems which could have been avoided had I turned myself in when I awoke last night. I said as much.

"Yes well… hindsight and all that," Ghost muttered. It focused its scan on one of the drawers on the right side of the desk.

After a moment of deliberation, I decided that looting and pillaging would be my best option. I could kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. Hitting gang hideouts and taking their stuff would serve both to cull the gangs in this area as well as increase my funds and supplies. The gang presence in this area was not as pronounced as I had thought initially, so I would have to hunt. It would take some planning and preparation, but it was nothing I was not ready for.

Something in me, something primal and new was thrilled by that revelation.

I placed that on the back burner though and moved on to the next item on my list.

"I want to go to my parents."

Ghost stopped what it was doing and swiveled to face me. "What? No, that's a bad idea," it said.

"Why?" I bit out.

Floating closer to me, Ghost sighed, which was still weird since it was a robotic drone, and said, "You were dead for eight days, Guardian."

"So?" I asked, defiance dripping from the word.

"The shock of seeing their dead daughter suddenly returned to life might do more harm than good," Ghost said.

"Horse shit," I hissed. "If it were me, I would want to know that my daughter was miraculously returned to the land of the living."

Ghost started to say something, but I continued talking over it.

"And I might be able to get some answers to fill these holes in my memory that you so helpfully supplied me with."

"Guardian, I-"

"I have journals, I remember THAT much and they could-"

Interrupting me this time, Ghost loudly said, "GUARDIAN! We just broke out of a police station, and while yes that was a bad idea, I admit that, where is the first place they are going to be looking for you?"

I inhaled and opened my mouth to retort, but my words died in my throat. Ghost was right. "I suppose," I mumbled.

"It's not a terrible idea, Guardian," Ghost went on, "But let's wait a few days. Let the heat die down and all."

"What about food?" I inquired.

"Don't need it," Ghost countered.

I thought back to what Ghost had told me about the light fueling my abilities. Some capes didn't need to sleep, so perhaps I was similar. "The light?" I asked.

Ghost bobbed up and down happily. "Exactly! You don't need to eat, sleep or drink because a guardian is sustained by the light," it chirped. "You technically still can if you want, like last night. If you eat, you won't get fat either!"

It only took me a moment before I realized the most practical application for this power.

"Chocolate," I said. "We need chocolate. All of it."

As we discussed all our plans, I started to realize that my powers were very powerful. A tinkering power, extreme destructive potential, and veritable immortality. All I had to do was literally die to get them.

As a girl I had daydreamed about getting powers. Emma and I had played as girls pretending that we were super heroes, and I always pretended to be Miss Militia while Emma was "Legend but a girl". As we grew older, we stopped playing, but we still would talk about what powers we wanted. Emma changed what powers she wanted constantly, but I always flip flopped between Alexandria and Miss Militia. To me, they exemplified what it meant to be a hero.

While I never went so far to conciser myself a 'cape geek', I knew a fair amount about powers. I followed various threads on PHO concerning my favorite heroes, and the villains in Brockton Bay. But one thing I never learned was just how people got powers. If what I went through was the norm rather than the exception, I probably wouldn't have been too keen to get powers.

My brooding was interrupted by Ghost when it nudged the drawer it had been scanning.

"Hey, Guardian, unlock this drawer," it said. "My scanners are picking up something in here."

"Why can't you unlock it," I asked.

"I don't do mechanical locks."

Concentrating a moment, I formed a thin ray of solar energy from my index finger. It was pencil thin and about three inches long, much like a blow torch, but many times hotter. I crouched down and carefully pointed it at the keyed lock, then thrust my finger forward. The lock disintegrated and the heat charred the hole my finger made.

But the drawer was unlocked.

I pulled the drawer open. Inside the drawer was a mess. It was cluttered with papers, a check book that was empty of checks except one voided check, and a pack of gum. There were a few pencils and pens rolling around in the bottom including a fairly nice brushed stainless steel fountain pen.

Ghost grumbled when I didn't find anything odd. "I know I was scanning some kind of electronic device," it whispered.

I wrenched the drawer from it's runners and emptied the contents on the floor, but despite the fact that it was empty, I still heard rattling.

It must have had a false bottom. Carefully, I broke the back of the drawer away from the sides, and sure enough there was an empty space at the bottom of the drawer about an inch and a half deep.

I dumped that out as well and a banded stack of bills, a tinkertech tablet and a small caliber hand gun clattered to the floor.

Ghost dissolved the handgun into storage and began to count the bills while I fiddled with the tablet. My tinker power told me that it was still good and that there were a few components that I could re-purpose for my own devices. But my curiosity got the better of me and I decided to keep it and found out what it said before I dismantled it. There had to be a reason why a small machine shop like this had an obviously tinkertech tablet hidden away in the foreman's office.

Until I could find a charger though, I was out of luck.

Ghost helpfully informed me that the stack of bills amounted to five thousand in various denominations. It was a start.

But I was ready for some action. "Alright, Ghost," I said, setting the tablet on the desk. "How about we do some scouting? I'm ready to start our plan."

So I have the next 10 days off, and the wife didn't give me any projects, so... all the time to write! Next time we have a bit more discovery, a little action and perhaps a time-skip.

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Right between the eyes.

Jan 8, 2017

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#110

Again, thanks to WirelessGrapes for beta and editing. I'm not happy with this chapter, but it needed to get done. Also, I got sick over my Christmas break so I didn't get as much writing done as I'd have liked. I'm still recovering, but it's slow going. So, sorry if I got your hopes up. But it continues. Enjoy!

Old version in the spoiler. The new one is below.

Spoiler

Running across the roof tops was quickly becoming my favorite way to travel. With my new movement powers, I could cover long distances relatively quickly. But, I was discovering the limitations that came with them as well and I decided to spread my wings, so to speak, and experiment a little while I was out.

First, I needed to find out what limitations I had on my teleport, or 'Blink' as Ghost called it.

"Ghost, can you keep track of how far each blink takes me?" I asked.

"Absolutely," Ghost replied. "Feet, or meters?"

"Meters please."

Randomly, I decided that I would travel north first and scout out just how far that direction the E88's territory extended. With that, I blinked to the roof of my hideout.

SHINCK

There was a rushing sensation, then my feet set down on the gravel surface.

"Four point two meters," Ghost informed me.

That had been easy enough, nowhere near my limit. My next target was the roof of the building across the street. Just giving it a quick glance, I estimated that the distance was at least four times what I'd just done. I focused a moment, then concentrated on being on that roof. Then, I took a step forward and…

SHINCK

There was that same rushing sensation, and I found myself about three meters above the buildings roof. I called on the Light and floated gently down to the surface, this one covered in a black rubber like material that had seen better days. It cracked and flaked under the soles of my boots.

"Twenty two point eight meters," Ghost said.

Again, that seemed easy enough, and I knew I could go further still. So, for my next test, I focused on a point to the north, the direction I had decided to scout earlier, and blinked that way.

SHINCK

That same rushing sensation over came me and I found myself above the alley between two buildings, about ten meters in the air. I hovered there for a fraction of a second before gravity decided to remind me that it existed and I plummeted down. I looked up and tried to Blink back to the roof tops, but nothing happened.

I squeaked a little, flailing in the air before landing roughly in a pile of boxes and crates, wood and cardboard scattering around from my impact. For an almost thirty foot fall, I was remarkably unhurt. But still, I laid there for a moment to catch my breath

Ghost materialized above me. "Perhaps we should travel at street level?" it asked a little uneasily. I was a little touched by its concern considering his snarky attitude earlier.

"No, I'm fine," I insisted, "How far did I travel?"

"Fifty meters," Ghost answered instantly.

I brushed a bit of dust off of my jacket pauldron as I got to my feet. Fifty meters seemed like a good set distance for my power, but I needed to repeat it to make sure. After reorienting myself back to the north, I waited until Ghost dematerialized and then I blinked back to the roof top.

SHINCK

"Four point eight meters."

With a huff of exasperation I said, "No, Ghost, I, ack…" I rubbed my forehead through the visor of my helmet. "Never mind."

"Alright, Guardian."

My eyes narrowed as I practically heard the smirk in its robotic voice.

Over the next couple of Blinks I learned that fifty meters was indeed the hard limit for my teleports. But I also discovered that I could Blink as many times as I needed within that fifty meters until the total distance was accumulated. Afterward, there was a 'cool down' period of five seconds before I could blink again.

Unfortunately, my Blink was very unforgiving. Once I hit fifty meters, it would dump me unceremoniously back into reality no matter where or how high I was at the moment. At one point, I accidentally ended up plummeting thirty feet into a haul-away dumpster full of broken masonry before I remembered that I could kinda, sorta, hover too.

I may have screamed a little that time. I know for sure Ghost laughed at me. Evil bastard.

The only incident of note, other than my own mishaps, didn't happen until I was almost to the Docks area. The E88 gang tags started to fade and be replaced by red and green ABB letters sprayed messily on buildings and bus stops. I stopped traveling and turned around. I had already made up my mind that I was going to focus in the commercial district, and specifically around my hideout, so the Empire was my chosen opponent. The Azn Bad Boyz weren't on my radar yet; I didn't want to fight a war on two fronts.

But as I turned back to the south, I heard some shouting in an Asiatic language I couldn't place, then gunshots. My shields registered a hit as I landed on the top of a convenience store and quickly Blinked behind the rooftop air conditioning unit for cover.

"What on Earth did you do Guardian?" Ghost quipped.

"No idea," I snapped back focusing on the battle at hand.

"They shot at us!"

"Really? I didn't notice," I drawled, ignoring Ghost's protested response.

I glanced around the A/C and saw three gang members. The one wearing a red and green bandanna tied around his right arm ran to the right. The other two ran to the left. All three took cover behind gas pumps. That was a little problematic since I couldn't use my solar powers.

Well, not without blowing the entire gas station to hell.

Fortunately, they only had smaller caliber hand guns, so I was in no real danger, but instincts ingrained from years of living in a crap hole of a city like Brockton Bay were hard to ignore and I ducked back behind the A/C unit as bullets ricocheted around me.

"You know, you could just move on," Ghost cautioned nervously.

Quickly taking another glance to confirm their positions, I replied, "They started it."

One of the thugs pulled out a cell phone, perhaps to call for back up and I chose that moment to strike. My confiscated shotgun materialized in my hands and my perception started to slow, as I spun around the air conditioner and Blinked down by the thug with the phone.

My sudden appearance took him by surprise and he shouted something in the language that I had no clue about. With a quick step forward, I grabbed his hand that held the phone and crushed it. I ignored the feel of bones and plastic crunching in my gauntlet, and the twinge of guilt that snapped through me, but disappeared just as quickly. Then, I placed the barrel of the shotgun firmly against the mans chest and fired a nonlethal round.

He crumpled to the concrete, groaning.

My HUD registered a few rounds impacting my shield from behind, so I whirled around and blinked forward. This gang member was more on the ball and attempted to whip me with the handle of his pistol, but I grabbed his wrist and pulled him toward me and imbedded my knee in his gut. He dry heaved and I brought the stock of the shotgun down on the back of his skull.

Two down.

The third man had the sense to run. I watched him go, his loose ponytail and jacket flapping behind him in his panicked retreat.

"You're letting him go?" Ghost asked incredulously.

"Nope," I replied cheekily, grinning under my mask.

I waited for the gang member to be well away from the gas station before flinging my hand out. A small orb arced from my outstretched arm and landed a few meters in front of the man before blooming into a small sun. The man stopped just in time to avoid incinerating himself, and with a final Blink I squeezed his neck in the crook of my arm, until he stopped struggling and went limp.

The fight over, my adrenaline began to fade and time slowed to normal.

"All three have strong vital signs," Ghost informed me proudly. "Well done, Guardian."

I looked around and was satisfied at the results. Other than the scorched and melted asphalt there was no damage to speak of. I hadn't killed anyone, and I stopped three gang members easily. I turned to leave but Ghost stopped me.

"Wait, check their pockets!"

"You want me to take their stuff?" I asked incredulously.

"Obviously," Ghost piped up excitedly. "We need supplies, and I'm detecting small electronics on them!"

I shrugged, taking Ghost's advice, and heading over to the groaning or unconscious goons. Besides, if they had a phone, I could call the police and report this. Though, if the panicked gas station attendant on the phone was any indication I wouldn't have to.

Oops.

Still, I started to rifle through their pockets. I came up with a stack of bills, two other cell phones and three small caliber handguns. Not a bad haul. I could count the bills when I got back to my hideout, and I asked Ghost to dematerialize the guns into storage.

"You know, I could just turn them into glimmer," Ghost informed me.

I paused a moment, unfamiliar with the word, other than its use in kids shows.

"Glimmer?"

"Yes, Guardian. Glimmer, or programmable matter can be fabricated using my integrated printer into small objects that I have blueprints for!" Ghost cheerfully supplied.

Well, that was exciting. "What can you make?" I asked, gaining steam.

"Well, right now I have blueprints for pretty much any ammo you can think of, and after I scan it, I could probably reproduce one of those cell phones." Ghost explained. "Unfortunately anything bigger than that would require a glimmer-fab."

Ghost looked at me hopefully.

I rolled my eyes, taking the obvious bait.

"What's a glimmer-fab?" I asked dramatically.

"Darn, I was hoping your smith power was the complete package," Ghost said, almost ruefully. I could tell he was really hoping I knew that one. "Just guns and armor then?"

I focused on the blueprints that seemed to be ever present in my mind. I could indeed make more than just guns and armor. There were ideas for some sort of hover bike, robots and even an actual space ship. I told Ghost as much.

"Well, without a glimmer-fab you're going to be stuck making this stuff by hand, but we just don't have any of the tools or primitive fabricators that we need," Ghost said sullenly.

"If I knew what a glimmer-fab even was, I might be able to make one," I said. "I'll still need these 'primitive' tools though..."

"I can show you, when we get back to the hideout and maybe we-"

Ghost stopped when we heard sirens in the distance.

"Later," I told Ghost. "We need to go."

So, I took back to the roofs, and worked my way back south. I still had scouting I wanted to do anyway.

The further south and west I went the worse the buildings became, but also the less the E88 had a presence. Eventually I came to Interstate 3 which ran north-west and south east along the edge of Brockton Bay. Other than a few gang tags, there was little to no gang presence here. Across the highway were some of the higher-end houses. This is where the mayor lived, I remembered, and some of the higher income people who chose to make this city their home.

Moving back east, the buildings got bigger, with the skyline of down town Brockton Bay dominating the horizon. As I got closer to them, the Empire's presence grew pronounced as well. More and more shaved heads and tattoos decorated the people I saw out on the street. But as I teleported and floated from roof top to roof top, these people at least had the common sense not to mess with an unknown cape.

Eventually, my rooftop jaunt took me back to my hideout. I did a perimeter check and, after I didn't see anything or anyone suspicious, I made my way back into the side entrance, up to the office and back into the leather chair.

Ghost materialized in the air in front of me and rematerialized my spoils from my fight with the ABB gang members on the desk in front of me. A quick count told me that, all in all, they were carrying one hundred forty three dollars, one debit card belonging to a Johnathan Chang, three nine millimeter handguns and a Nokia smart phone.

"You should keep the phone," Ghost said. "We could use some way to access the internet and make calls."

I agreed. Even without a data plan, my tinker powers told me that I could easily modify the phone with a few parts from the old computer on the desk so that it would splice into existing networks. So that was a given.

"What about the guns?" I asked, looking over the phone once more. The guns were a small caliber, and I really didn't need any more pistols. The revolver I had taken from the skinhead was perfect already.

"Those I can convert into glimmer for you," Ghost said.

"What is this glimmer stuff, anyway?" I asked. "You mentioned earlier today that its some kind of programmable matter, but… as far as I know, nothing like that exists here."

"It doesn't!" Ghost said cheerfully, before pausing. "Yet, anyways. May I?"

I nodded and waved to one of the guns giving it free reign to dismantle the guns. Ghost swiveled and scanned the gun, a blue grid pattern appearing across the surface of the fire arm. Then, it glowed a bright sky blue briefly before falling apart into various sky blue cubic chunks. I picked up a handful of it, and my power supplied me with so many ideas for what I could make from it.

...If only I had a glimmer-fab.

The glimmer chimed like crystal as I dropped it back in the pile. I took my helmet off, setting it on the desk and took a larger chunk of the glimmer and held it up for inspection. It was almost a perfect cube, and it glowed with an inner blue light. The glimmer itself would have been clear if not for the glow.

"So this stuff… you can make ammo?" I asked expectantly.

"Yep!"

"Can you turn anything into glimmer?" I went on, gaining excitement.

"No, only composite plastics, silicon and metal," Ghost explained. "The more pure, the more glimmer. And there is a mass and volume limit too. Only about ten cubic centimeters of material, depending on what it is. It also needs to be seperate from its component parts."

So no disposing of bodies then, darn. Or, I assumed, since Ghost didn't mention rock, I couldn't use Ghost to convert a brick in a wall to allow access into a building, or just convert a window or door to gain entrance to a locked room.

"How does it work anyway?" I asked. This stuff seemed really powerful for something that Ghost seemed to take for granted.

Ghost scanned the glimmer, and one by one the glimmer crystals vanished. Then, from thin air, Ghost's scan beam began to print slugs for my revolver on the desk. It printed ten rounds before stopping. "Ta-da!" Ghost cheered.

I could definitely see where this would come in handy. Four of the bullets went into my revolver immediately and the other six I deposited into a pouch on my belt.

"What about the glimmer-fab?" I asked. "You said you could show me, back at the gas station."

Ghost nodded, projecting another beam, this time at my new phone. "Just let me unlock this, and I'll reset the password for you," it said.

The screen lit up with a blueprint of a device. It had a solid body held up by four sturdy legs which kept the device at chest level. The bulk of the body was taken up by a chamber that had four moving apparatus, each tipped with an extrusion nozzle or data projector. My power was telling me that, yes, I could build this, but no… the parts I would need to make to build it were out of reach just now.

Mentally, my priorities shifted. I definitely needed one of these soon. If I could build myself a glimmer-fab, I could then proceed to build the parts from the other blueprints that I had floating around in my head. More powerful guns, a hover bike, new armor.

"Ghost," I called out, still staring at the blueprint, "I have a task for you."

"Yes, Guardian?"

I tapped the phone. It worked for now, but I knew that when the service provider failed to receive payment, they would shut it off. I knew I could modify the phone with a more powerful reciever and with Ghost's help, custom firmware so that I would never need a phone plan. "I'm going to modify this. Then I need you to go online and do some scouting of your own. Find us an Empire safe house, or store house, or… whatever that we can hit," I told Ghost. "We're going to start making a name for ourselves."

ooOOoo

Modifying the phone was proving to be an annoyance. For one, I didn't have any of the correct tools. Or any tools for that matter. The case of the phone was easy enough to open, but inside the phone required small screwdrivers and a soldering iron to modify it as I needed. Theoretically, I could use my solar powers to simulate a soldering iron, but I didn't yet trust my own control not to incinerate the phone.

I did a search through the shop below and found plenty of tools scattered through various tool boxes, left behind when the building was put up for lease. But unfortunately, they were all too big. On the plus side, there were a lot of power tools, like drills and jigsaws that I could use for components or glimmer.

Eventually, Ghost and I determined that I would have to make a trip to a hardware store. It was unfortunately unavoidable.

That was how I found myself down in the ladies room on the shop floor, staring at myself in the mirror. The smart phone had a flashlight app that was providing light for me. I had taken my armor and overcoat off, and Ghost helpfully dematerialized it into storage leaving me standing there wearing nothing but the black under layer for my armor. I leaned forward and pulled down on the lower eye lid of my right eye. My eyes looked slightly bloodshot and there were dark bags underneath them. And they still glowed with an inner Light. Added to the fact that my hair had been shaved when I was in the morgue, I could have passed for a drugged out skin head.

With a sigh, I turned to Ghost who was going up and down the row of lockers behind me and scanning each and every locker. The lockers were old. They'd been painted a dark green that faded over time, and certain spots were rusty, but the locks were still good.

"This isn't going to work," I grumbled. "I look suspicious."

"You need clothes," Ghost pointed out the obvious. It paused in front of the locker on the top row, two from the left side. "Open this one."

The number dial for the combination lock spun freely, and after a moment of hesitation I merely wrenched the lock off. The metal let out a tortured shriek before the door swung open to the right. Inside the locker were a pair of boots and tan coveralls. Unfortunately, the boots were too small, and, after trying on the coveralls, I discovered that they were far too large for my skinny frame.

They went in a pile to the side while Ghost resumed scanning the lockers. I started moving right, systematically opening the other lockers, but I didn't find anything. Suddenly, I remembered seeing a coat closet up by the receptionists desk the night we first broke in here. Leaving Ghost to its search, I made my way back up front.

The coat closet was set in the wall to the right of the main doors. It was slightly ajar, and the handle had no lock anyway, so I simply opened it.

Jackpot!

There were two coats hanging on the bar. One was a biker style jacket made of cracked and brittle black leather. Once again, I wondered just how long this building sat here, unoccupied and waiting for someone to lease it. The other coat would suit me much better. It was a tan, heavy winter jacket with a hood. On the shoulder was a logo of a mountain in a white shield, underneath it it said 'Burton'.

I tried it on, and, while it was still very big on me, it would suit my purposes perfectly. Trying the zipper, I was relieved to find that it worked, and I searched the pockets. In the right breast pocket was a pack of gum, and in the front left pocket was a twenty dollar bill. On a whim, I decided to check the biker jackets pockets, and in the right pocket were a pair of aviator sunglasses.

Score!

When I got back to the ladies room, Ghost had just finished scanning the bottom row of lockers. I threw the hood up and put the sunglasses on my face. Spreading my arms to the side, I asked, "How's this?"

Ghost floated up and looked me up and down. "It'll have to do," it sighed. "You still look homeless, though."

I shot it a look.

"Find anything?" I asked.

"I think there are a pair of shoes in this one that'll fit you," Ghost said as it floated back to the left. It hovered down to the bottom of the locker and shined its light in the bottom air vents.

Sure enough, after tearing that locker open I discovered a pair of white Adidas sneakers that were only one size larger than I normally wore. So, I sat down on the bench in front of the lockers and took out my phone. I set the phone on the bench next to me and started to put the shoes on.

"Do me a favor, will you and see if you can't find a hardware store nearby," I told Ghost. Ghost nodded and scanned the phone, opening the map app and began to search.

The shoes fit me well enough, and after getting them on, I paced back and forth a few times to get a feel for them. Fortunately, the under suit added a bit of thickness to my feet, like woolen socks so the shoes weren't too lose. Back at the mirror, I took one last look at myself.

My reflection showed a skinny girl wearing a coat that was far too big for her, and sunglasses that made her look like a bug. My under suit on my legs could pass for leggings, but the white sneakers completed a look that frankly made me look… special.

With a sigh, I turned back to Ghost. "Anything?" I asked.

"There is an ACE Hardware store three blocks south and one mile east of here," Ghost said. "They close at… eight p.m. today, so we still have plenty of time to make it."

I made a confirmatory grunt, before retrieving my phone and checking the time. It was nearing four in the afternoon, so I figured I could head out now and it would take me about thirty to forty five minutes to make it there. Faster, if I traveled by roof top. But given that it was nearing the end of the work day, there would be more people out and about, and I risked being spotted. So, on foot like a regular pedestrian it was.

ooOOoo

It was nearing five by the time I made it to the hardware store. I had underestimated just how busy this area of the city was. It made sense though, given that this was the industrial area of the city. People were just starting to get off work and traffic was busy. Fortunately, I was able to throw my hood up which hid my head, and put my hands in the pockets of my jacket and no one gave me a second glance.

Once in the store, I grabbed a shopping basket and nodded politely to the greeter at the door. I made my way to the tool section. I let my tinker power take hold and started filling the basket with anything and everything I needed. A variety of screwdrivers, including torx and safety went in first. I started grabbing pliers and assortment of wrenches before realizing that I could just buy one of the multi-piece tool boxes and get all that for cheaper.

I made sure to grab a micro rotary tool, as well as a soldering iron and a spool of solder too. Finally, I made my way through the hardware section of the store, grabbing anything my power said would be useful.

At the register, the cashier, her name tag read 'Betty', gave me a strange look as she rang up all my purchases. I kept my eyes firmly on the exit, until she made an attempt at small talk.

"This is quite the purchase," Betty drawled, scanning one of my screwdrivers with the scanner gun.

I hummed noncommittally.

"What's it all for?" She continued.

I hadn't taken the time to come up with an excuse. Hell, I hadn't thought that anyone would really try asking me. Though, I looked weird, why would they? But this cashier was trying. So I just stared at her over the rim of my aviators until she fidgeted, dropping the screwdriver into a bag.

Ghost had hidden itself in my jacket, and it whispered something up at me, it's voice muffled by the thick coat. "Mrf mm mrf-tell her you're a hobbyist."

"Hush!" I hissed down at it. It didn't occur to me that I must have looked odd, talking to my chest.

Glancing back up at the cashier I noticed that she was staring at me wide eyed. I tried to smile, but it most likely came off as a grimace. "Um...Hobbies," I said.

"No!" Ghost hissed.

"Ah… do, uh, do you live around here?" Betty went on.

Ghost whispered something else and I glanced down at my chest, then back up at Betty, but she was busy scanning the bags of hardware.

"What?" I whispered back at Ghost.

But, finally finished scanning my purchase, Betty told me the total. One thousand, three hundred two dollars and seventy three cents. Then, she asked, "Cash or credit?"

I pulled the wad of cash out of my waist pocket and began to rapidly count out hundreds. Finally, I handed over the stack of bills.

"Um, I can't make change for bills larger than a twenty," Betty muttered, shooting me another look. She pointed to a Word Document that was taped to the register which announced that fact.

"Keep it," I said, waving her off. I gathered my bags, snatched the receipt from the printer and quickly scuttled from the store.

Once out side and hurrying away, Ghost wiggled out from my coat. It seemed to glare at me, its occulus narrowing in my direction. "Stuff like this watched" Ghost insisted. "I've was browsing the internet on your phone, and this is one of the things people look out for. It's one of the surest signs of a tinker."

I couldn't help but feel liked I had screwed up back in the store. "Oops?" I finally offered after a moment of awkward silence.

Ghost drooped and pressed against my coat, before sighing melodramatically. "We're doomed..."

Last edited: Jan 9, 2017

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Right between the eyes.

Jan 18, 2017

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#181

Triple post! I win! Right?

...Right?

Anyway, next installment. There are some nasty words in here, but, you know E88.. Just forewarning. Thanks again to WirelessGrapes.

After my trip into the hardware store, Ghost continued to browse the internet from my phone while we both silently agreed not to talk about our experience in the store. Since Ghost was a being of Light, housed in a high tech shell, it was able to surf the internet much faster than I would have been able to, hindered only by the speed of the phone's connection.

Even then, Ghost had ways around that. It was able to boost the signal significantly, at the cost of a little bit of battery charge and a very hot phone in the pocket of my jacket. But, it was well worth it. Delving into what it called 'the deep 'net', Ghost managed to track down a few locations of E88 stash houses in the area.

I was impressed. But when Ghost started rambling on about how it hacked the HTTP protocol to back trace the something or another, I cut it off. It may have well been speaking a foreign language for all I understood. All that mattered was that we had potential targets.

Almost giddy with excitement, I wanted to drop off our purchases and hurry out right away, but Ghost cautioned me otherwise.

"Hold on a second, Guardian," Ghost spoke cautiously. It was hovering low over the desk, shining a light so I could see in the room. "We need to be smart about this. We should scope out the areas these places are, get a feel for them."

I set my bags down on the desk in the foreman's office. The multi-piece tool set went next to it, and I started to pull my purchases out and organize them. Ghost was right, and I said as much.

"Yeah, you're right," I responded sullenly, avoiding looking at Ghost. It might have been correct, but I didn't like it. I was aching for some action.

"Furthermore, we have another issue," Ghost said ominously. "That," It swiveled its light to the phone, lying next to the battered and filthy computer keyboard. "Is our only source of information at the moment, and its battery charge isn't going to last forever."

I set the spool of solder down, along with the bag I had pulled it out of, and picked up the phone. With a press of the main button, the display lit up and I looked at the charge level. It read seventeen percent, and, as I watched, changed to sixteen.

With a frown, I looked at the bottom where the phones ports were located. It had the standard headphone port, and another narrow and wider port that I assumed was the charging port. As far as I could remember, I had never owned a cell phone. My father was against them for some reason, and I had never really wanted one. It didn't make sense, but I'm sure there was a good reason.

"Even more than that, we have no way of charging it." I said, gesturing to the lights on the ceiling. Then as an aside, I added hopefully, "Unless you can just beam power at it?"

Ghost just started at me flatly and blinked its occulus.

"Doesn't work like that. Gotcha," my face slightly flushing. Ghost could handle all the tech stuff, my job was to shoot things.

"Fortunately, I believe we can restore power to this facility at the main disconnect down the street," Ghost said brightly. "Once we do that, its just a matter of getting a charging cable. Perhaps one that will work with that tablet you found, too."

Reminded of that particular piece of tech, I retrieved it from the desk drawer I had stored it in and looked it over. When I had initially found it, I gave it a glancing once-over and when I discovered that it had no power, put it in the drawer to be messed with later. Now I looked at it again a little closer.

It was about eight inches wide by ten inches tall and a quarter inch thick. The screen was dark and matte and seemed to repel fingerprints. A silver plastic body encased the entire thing, with button on the left hand side. I pressed it, but like the other night, all that happened was a red battery with an X through it flashing on the screen.

Unfortunately, there was no charging port that I could locate anywhere on the case.

I frowned and set the tablet back in its drawer and went back to unbagging my tools. The rotary tool came next. I took it out of the box and stared in dismay at the power cable that dangled from the end.

"Right!" I said suddenly. "Let's get the power back on."

Ghost helpfully materialized my armor and I put it and my helmet back on, then went outside.

All it took to turn the power back on was tracing the incoming power wire to the building back to the transformer and isolator assembly on a near by power pole. I quickly glanced around to verify that no one was watching. Then when I was sure I wasn't being watched, I blinked to the top of the pole and reconnected the switch.

With a shower of sparks, my hideout had power. Glorious, glorious power.

It wasn't until I was back inside and playing happily with my new power tools that it occurred to me that the power company, Eversource, might be monitoring power usage.

"I think, that if we limit our usage and don't use many lights we should be fine," Ghost said hesitantly "This place used to be a machining shop. They used a lot of power when they were open. The trickle of your power tools shouldn't even register on their meters."

So once again, letting Ghost putter about on the internet, I began to play with my new toys.

oooOOOooo

I tinkered with the phone for a few hours before my need for action got the better of me and we decided to go scout the first location Ghost had discovered. According to what it had learned, this location was a stash house for drugs, and they had a shipment coming through in a few days.

Perched on the roof of a building about a hundred meters away, I watched as the warehouse location bustled with activity. Being the later in the evening, this was odd, but what was worse was how blatant they were about it. No disguises were worn, and no effort was taken to make their movements covert. I watched for a few minutes more.

"What do you think, Ghost?" I inquired.

Ghost was silent for a moment before answering me. Its voice was hesitant as it responded in my helmet, "I think we should skip on this one. There's too big of a gang presence so it would take too much effort to get too little pay out."

I nodded. "And even then, you said this was mostly drugs, right?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Yeah, we wouldn't be able to do much with those," I said firmly. "I'm sure we could find a buyer, but even then… I want to be a hero."

"Right then!" Ghost chirped. "Onward and forwards!"

The next location was a lot more enticing than the first one by far. We stopped behind the supports of an old billboard across the road from the back loading area of a run down grocery store. This stash was rumored to be a location where the Empire smuggled guns. Ghost was unable to find out just what kind of guns may or may not have been in there, but the chance to increase my own arsenal was making me salivate.

Unfortunately, this location was far less busy than the previous one. We watched for about an hour with little activity, and I was about to call it and move to the last location when I saw someone emerge from an exit by the dock door.

"Heads up," I said urgently.

The man lit a cigarette and pulled his cell phone from his pocket to make a call. He didn't look much like a gang member, but I watched for a few minutes anyway. Sure enough, he was wearing a maroon apron and a name tag that marked him as an employee of the grocery chain. Apparently, he was on break. He finished his call, snuffed his cigarette and went back inside.

"Damn," I sighed dejectedly.

"It was only a rumor, Guardian," Ghost reminded me. "And it was a little too close to our hideout."

"I know," I sighed. "But it would have been perfect."

The third location was a storage facility on the eastern edge of the commercial part of town, nearing the residential part of downtown. Here, warehouses and factories gave way to apartment buildings and shopping facilities, though most of them were nowhere near as nice as the suburbs on the western outskirts of the city.

I was able to find a nice vantage point on top of a three story apartment complex to the west of my target, a U-Stor-It storage facility. According to Ghost, the storage facility saw a lot of Empire gang activity, and it was rumored again that something more than knick-nacks were stored here.

This one was in a better location that the grocery store had been, and there were fewer gang members that I would have to deal with, making it ideal for a first strike. My official debut as a hero.

We watched for about half an hour, and I was able to discern that there weren't many gang members here right now. I counted six people. Two men out front, three more in the gated facility itself and one woman who was, oddly enough, walking around the block.

Once I was satisfied, I decided to return to my hideout.

But first, I needed to make a stop. I looked around until I located a convenience store. This one happened to be a Seven-Eleven about two blocks north of my current location and after a short roof hop I landed in front of the double doors.

The door chimed as I stepped in the store, and I glanced over at the clerk. He was a younger man, probably in his early twenties with a patchy goatee and bleached blonde hair and he was sitting in a plexi-glass enclosure, staring at me wide eyed and I decided to ignore him. I would be in and out before he had the chance to do anything stupid.

It didn't take me long to find what I was looking for. First, I found a budget smart phone charger. It was one of the multi-plug ones, with a two prong plug at one end for 115 volt power and on the other it had five various others. Fortunately it was cheap; only eight bucks. Second, I went down the candy isle and picked out three bags of chocolate kisses.

As I approached the counter, the clerk backed away from the glass and bumped into the cigarette rack, knocking a few packs down and on his head. Silently, I slid my purchases into the depression in the counter under the glass and waited for him to take it.

But he just stayed there, back against the cigarettes and staring.

"I think he's afraid of me," I said wryly, smirking behind my helmet.

"Seems like that," Ghost responded over the comm, amusement present in its voice.

Out of the speakers, I said, "I'm not gonna rob you. I want to buy these and I'll be out of your hair. Promise."

The clerk didn't budge.

"Oh for fucks sake," I grumbled. Ignoring Ghost's laughter, I tallied up the total cost and slid a twenty under the glass, taking my purchases back. "Keep the change, jerk."

Ghost just laughed harder.

oooOOOooo

A day later and my phone was coming along well, though it wasn't going to be pretty. I had gotten to work almost immediately upon arriving from my excursion the previous night. Not needing sleep turned out to be huge boon for me since I effectively had eight to ten extra hours to do my thing.

The foreman's old computer turned out to be very useful. I was right in my initial assessment of it; even after having restored power to the facility, the computer didn't boot up. I had cracked the case and discovered that at some time in the past a power surge had fried a few of the components. I could have fixed it; but the computer would be more useful to me a parts for my phone build.

Fortunately for me, the wireless network card was intact, and it was re-purposed into a powerful antenna to boost the phones signal. Some soldering and a few capacitors from the computer improved the power, and I was able to re-purpose one of the RAM sticks with some wire and solder to increase the processing power.

Some duct tape to hold it all together and voila! It certainly wasn't going to win any aesthetic awards, but it would do what I needed it to. Next it was Ghost's turn.

A few short moments later and Ghost was done. My new phone was off the grid, used no data or minutes and was assuredly faster than anything we could get commercially.

I popped a celebratory chocolate in my mouth and decided to take a nap.

oooOOOooo

Two days later I was ready to strike. I had done some more scouting and committed the skinhead's patrol routes and schedules to memory. There were always two hanging out by the gate. For all intents and purposes these two seemed to be loitering, but it wasn't always those two individuals. So to the causal observer, it would seem that they were just chilling there.

Three more gang members patrolled inside the actual storage facility, wandering up and down the isles between buildings. However, my observations showed me that there was one unit that they routinely passed by, and that was most likely my target. Finally, one female member walked around the block every thirty minutes or so.

There were no cameras, thankfully, so I didn't have to worry about erasing them. And even if there were, Ghost could easily take care of them for me.

I crouched on the eave of the same apartment building looking down at the two skinheads outside the gate talk about which of the lesser races was the hottest. A cold front was moving in from the north and a bitter chill wind was whipping my overcoat about. But I didn't feel it. My armor was environmentally sealed and heated.

Revulsion welled up in me as I watched one of them, a burly man wearing a heavy coat and jeans, light a cigarette and talk about what condition he would leave "that nigger with the sweet ass" in when he was done with her. His companion emphatically disagreed. Instead, he insisted that "the slants were hotter".

Yeah, I wasn't feeling bad for what was about to happen.

Impatiently, I waited for the patroller that walked the outside of the storage facility to round the corner and walk out of site before I struck.

"Go! Now!" Ghost urged.

Gliding silently from above, I landed hard on the gang member on the right and he crumpled to the concrete with a crunching sound.

His companion let out a cry of alarm, but I quickly Blinked behind him. I wrapped one gloved hand over his mouth and nose, my other arm bent around his trachea. He thrashed against my grip, but it was useless against my augmented strength.

Eventually his struggles ceased, and I dropped him bonelessly to the sidewalk. I crouched over him and was relieved to find a strong pulse. He was out like a light. The other man...wasn't so lucky. His neck was bent at an angle that I was sure it wasn't supposed to go. His pulse was weak, and his breathing labored but he was alive.

For how long though, I was uncertain.

"There will probably be casualties, Guardian," Ghost softly urging me forwards. "It's an unfortunate part of what we do. Remember that."

I nodded, and hardened my resolve. They were Nazis. Gang members. The prime example of evil. I didn't want to purposefully take a life, but they did not deserve my pity. If there was Darkness on Earth Bet, it would be them. I couldn't just let them die, though. "Make sure to notify the PRT and the police when we're done here," I ordered.

"Yes, Guardian."

Looking to the right through the bars of the gate, I Blinked into the facility proper and began my search for the patrolling gang members. I would need to take them out quietly so no one would be able to alert anyone inside the storage unit.

I made my way from building to building and peered around each corner. Finally, by the fourth building I found my first target. He was making his way toward me, so I waited. As he stepped past the building, I lunged and buried my knee in his solar plexus twice. I brought my elbow down on the back of his neck and he collapsed. Then, just to be sure, I crouched down, pulled his head back and smashed it into the concrete, splashing blood against the asphalt.

Three down, two to go.

My next target was two rows over and walking away from me. This close to him I couldn't risk Blinking because he might hear the noise it made. So I crept as quick as I could toward him.

He must have heard my boot scuff on the asphalt, or my coat whipping in the wind anyway, because he turned around quickly.

"What the fuck!?" he shouted.

I dashed forward as quickly as I could run, which was not insignificant, as the thug fumbled at the waistband of his pants for his gun. Just as he managed to free it, I got to him and thrust both hands out, palms forward.

SHOOM!

Twin bursts of energy erupted from my hands and hurled the man backward. I Blinked behind him and repeated the action, this time with just one hand. The impact sent him cartwheeling head over heels and he landed in a heap, groaning.

I crouched down, my shotgun materializing in my hands and bashed him in the temple with the stock. He went still.

Standing up, I listened and heard rapid footsteps. The last patroller must have heard the fight and was running my way. I Blinked up to the top of the row of storage building I was closest to, and made my way to where the sound of the footsteps were coming from.

I must have misjudged where this last gang member was, because he spotted me first. He already had his gun out and clenched in his right hand. In his left, he had a two-way radio that squawked as he shouted into it. "I found him! Cape!" His voice cracked as he shouted, and he leveled his handgun at me and pulled the trigger.

"Shit!" I cursed venomously.

The small rounds did little to my shield as I jumped to the side and hovered through the air, about ten feet up. I materialized my revolver and took aim, squeezing off three shots with veteran precision. The first hit the radio, shattering the cheap plastic and pulping the man's hand with it. The second two him him in the chest and the impacts sent him sprawling where he laid spread out and groaning.

I stared numbly at the thug as he lay on the asphalt, blood pooling around his prone form. Once again, I had failed to rein in my instincts. Once again, I had used lethal force on someone who was far more fragile than I was.

There was a war within me at that moment. Part of me, the Guardian, the parahuman wanted to move on. I was, after all, on a mission. I had a goal to accomplish. Looking up, I could see my target, the storage unit at the end of the row.

But another part of me, the fragmented memories from Taylor Hebert, wanted to help this man. He didn't need to die.

There will be fatalities, Ghost had said. The Darkness could only be destroyed with death. A moment passed, and my resolve hardened. The man who lay dying at my feet had chosen his path, and that path took him across my own.

He had radioed someone, and I knew that my time was running out. I sprinted to the storage unit, releasing an orb of solar energy as I ran. It exploded on impact with the door, the sound deafening, and sent shards of aluminum all over the lane, as well as in the unit.

I was in the room before the smoke had a chance to clear, and I had no idea what I expected to find, but a stairwell leading down was certainly not it. Two men were picking themselves up off the floor, one to the left and one to the right of the stairs. I didn't give them a chance to recover, putting two rounds into the chest of the man on the left. The man on the right received a torrent of solar fire from my right hand.

Neither of them got up.

I didn't give them a second glance

I Blinked to the bottom of the stairs, gun at the ready. The room was roughly ten feet by ten feet, and there was a large table in the middle, with stacks of cash littering the surface. Four people, three men and one woman sat around the table in their underwear, apparently counting the money.

This was a money laundering operation it seemed.

I looked left, and there stood one last gang member. He had a stunned expression on his face, as if he hadn't expected me.

So I took advantage of the situation. A force blast from my hand sent him crashing into the concrete wall. I took two large steps and kicked forward, my foot impacting his chest and he crumpled to the floor and didn't move again, his shirt dampening.

The silence that came after was almost louder than the fight had been. The four people around the table were staring at me with various expressions of terror.

"I think these are civilians, Guardian," Ghost cautioned me.

I looked at each of them in turn. Sure enough, none of them bore the telltale tattoos of an E88 gang member.

"Get out!" I barked over my speakers, and the four of them scrambled for the stairs, tripping over themselves in their haste to get away from me. The woman took one last glance over her shoulder, eyes wide in fear, before disappearing over the top of the stairs.

Searching quickly, I located a duffel bag and began to stuff the stacks of cash into it. I filled it as full as I could, then zipped it up and dashed up the stairs. The two men at the top hadn't moved, and the one I shot looked like he was bleeding out.

I hesitated only a moment.

"Ghost, make the calls. Keep it short, and only give the details they need."

Then, I left, and headed back to my hideout.

oooOOOooo

I didn't stop until I was safely back at the machine shop. Adrenaline coursed through me. My hearing buzzed and the edges of my vision were blurry, but I didn't stop until I was safe.

The duffel bag made a muffled thump and threw up a small cloud of dust as I dropped it by the desk. Distantly, I made a mental note to buy a vacuum cleaner to clean this place up a bit. Then, I fell heavily into my desk chair. I pulled off my helmet and ran my hands over the stubble on my head, taking deep breaths as I did.

Ghost materialized in the air in front of me, but I didn't look up at it.

"That went well, Guardian," Ghost said softly. "You did well."

I was silent for a moment before I replied.

"I killed again," I whispered, my voice quavering. "...willingly. It just… happened."

"You don't know that they're dead," Ghost argued. Its voice was still soft. Hesitant.

My expression must have looked crazed, because Ghost backed up a few inches when I whipped my head up and glared at it.

"I put two fifty caliber rounds into the chests of two men," I hissed angrily through my teeth. A small, bright orb of solar energy appeared in my hand and hovered over my palm. "I torched that man, and I didn't even hesitate."

"Guardian, casualties-"

I interrupted Ghost, and yelled, "I know! Casualties will happen! But it doesn't mean I have to like it!"

There was silence for a moment.

In that silence I could feel it. A divide within myself. There was myself as a Guardian, a defender of the light, and destroyer of the darkness. She was a force of good. Deadly, and powerful.

Then there were the remnants of that little girl from long ago that longed to be a hero. She wanted to protect people, and defeat villains. Bring them to justice, not slaughter them.

And I knew, deep down that I couldn't be both.

I clutched at my scalp, my nails digging into the skin and clenched my eyes shut as a tear worked its way loose, both minds fighting for dominance.

"...So why do I like it?"

Last edited: Oct 7, 2017

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SniperFrog

Jan 18, 2017

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SniperFrog

SniperFrog

Right between the eyes.

Jan 29, 2017

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#207

In which Taylor dun goofed, and she ignored her problems like a normal person. As always, thanks to WirelessGrapes. Go read his stuff. It's damn good.

Ghost did everything it could to calm me down and get me to talk after my fit, but I resisted. I didn't really feel comfortable talking about what was bothering me. Never was, if I could remember correctly. It was probably what drove Emma away from me in the first place.

So, instead of talking about it, I compartmentalized it. Crammed everything that was wrong at the moment into a little jar and shelved it for another time and place. It kept telling me that my behavior was very destructive, even for a Guardian, but I eventually told Ghost to stuff it and went back to my tinkering.

The little drone hovered like a Mother Hen, and kept bringing up different conversation topics in an attempt to get me to talk, but I wasn't having it. I would talk when I was damn good and ready.

I had found a mostly empty spiral note book in one of the desk's cabinets. Only the first ten pages had any writing on them, filled with a messy scrawl that could have come from a doctor as easily as the foreman of this old shop. I deciphered them as best I could in an attempt to see if there was anything of importance written there. When it seemed like it was just random notes, I tore them out and set them aside.

The book became my idea book. Graph paper would have been better, but I didn't have any. I wrote down anything that popped into my head. Guns that spat Solar death. Rocket launchers that would hit like the fist of an angry god. Ideas for a hover bike, which, I thought needed to be built sooner rather than later.

It wasn't until I was half way through the design for a spaceship that the desire to build something became overwhelming.

I slapped the notebook and my pen down on the desk and got up from my chair.

"Where are you going?" Ghost asked as it followed me to the door.

"Downstairs," I replied tersely.

I stopped about halfway down the stairs to the shop floor. Turning to face the small drone, I steepled my hands in front of me with a clap. It took me a moment to gather my thoughts, then I spoke.

"I. Am. Fine." I bit out. "I've dealt with it, and I can move on. You don't need to follow me around and make sure that it is not eating at me. Understand?"

Ghost tilted sideways slightly in a disturbingly human gesture, like someone cocking their head to one side. It was silent a moment before it spoke, and when it did, its voice was soft.

"Do you remember what I said to you when I first brought you back?"

It took me a few seconds to remember as I thought back to that night. Laying on the table, Ghost's words didn't mean much to me at the time. "You told me," I said at last, "That you are my Ghost, and I am your Guardian."

"Exactly," Ghost said firmly. "And do you know what that means?"

I shook my head.

"A Guardian and Ghost have an almost…symbiotic relationship. We can not exist without each other. You provide me with an outlet for the Light's power, and I, in turn, keep you going," Ghost explained. "I am literally, your Ghost."

I frowned, not discerning what Ghost was trying to tell me.

"What this means, Guardian," Ghost went on. "Is that I am an extension of you. I know what you're feeling."

My brain all but stopped as it tried to process what Ghost just said. Did that mean that all these conversations I had with Ghost were me talking to myself? When Ghost gave me advice or told me to do something in combat, what I giving myself orders? I knew that powers could be really weird. A lot of powers straight up broke or ignored the laws of physics, or came with really weird side effects. Velocity, of the Protectorate for example, effected the world less, the faster he moved.

But this? This took the cake.

I couldn't really deal with it at the moment, so I turned around and went down the stairs. I needed to see if any of the material in the shop was still viable for my tinkering. "If that's the case," I said as I stepped off the bottom step. "Then you know that I'm fine."

"You're not fine!" Ghost shouted from the stairs. It floated off the center of the stair case and followed me as I searched around the shop.

"I'll deal."

Ghost growled, and I thought the sound would be almost cute if I wasn't supremely irritated at it for trying to play therapist. I exhaled through my nose in annoyance and resumed my search.

Ever helpful, Ghost followed me down and shined a spotlight in the darkened shop as we looked for any remaining stock. From our previous searches, and from the records I had read in the foreman's office, this machine shop specialized in metals but branched into ceramics when business was slow and I had need of both.

The shadows danced as we searched and I couldn't help the shiver that ran down my spine. I wanted so badly to turn the lights on, but I knew that heeding Ghost's earlier warning about not using too much power would be for the best.

My search however ended in disappointment. Much like the machines in the shop, the metal stock that remained had corroded and was mostly unusable and there was no ceramic save a few measly scraps.

I dropped a rusty rod of iron with a clang and a huff. Everything was useless to me, and it wasn't like I could just go to a scrap yard or hardware store and buy what I needed. Tools were one thing, but the amount of material I needed would set off alarm bells with pretty much every parahuman organization around.

But something Ghost had told me earlier came to mind. Ghost had the ability to create things out of glimmer, things like ammo. But could it create raw materials? I needed to find out, so I asked.

Ghost rocked back and forth, considering its answer before speaking.

"Not… not as such," it hedged. "There are a few conditions and well… drawbacks to doing that."

Ghost paused in its explanation and I waited patiently for it to continue.

"First, I'd need to create an engram of the material in question. For me to create an engram without having one to copy takes a good amount of time. Depending on the complexity of the item… five to fifteen minutes," Ghost explained. It began to float back and forth between two machines as it spoke.

"Now, an ingot of stainless steel, for example, one hundred percent pure would take me..." Ghost stopped pacing and looked up as it thought. "About eight minutes to convert."

Then it turned to face me.

"And that's just the first step."

I slumped dejectedly and groaned, sure where this explanation was going. But I gestured for Ghost to proceed anyway.

"Next, we need enough glimmer. Creating something from an already programmed engram costs almost nothing. Hmm..." Ghost's occulus pointed at the floor as it paused again. "How to quantify this. We'll call glimmer 'units'."

"Okay."

Ghost projected a beam on a nearby work table, and various cubes of glimmer appeared on the surface, each spaced about ten centimeters apart. The smallest was about five millimeters square, then a centimeter, all the way up to about ten centimeters. Oddly enough, the smaller the cube, the brighter it glowed, but regardless, the entire tabletop was suffused with a luminous blue glow.

Finished creating the glimmer, Ghost bobbed over the top of the smallest of the cubes. "This one is one unit of glimmer," It explained. "Each bullet I create takes one to three units, depending on the caliber of the bullet."

I nodded, following along.

"Now a rocket, or a grenade for a launcher would take one of these," Ghost went on, moving to float over the ten centimeter cube of glimmer. "Because one, the working mechanisms of the ammo are more complex, and two, they're bigger.

"This is if I am printing something from glimmer. If I am converting an existing engram to a physical object; your guns or armor for example, it takes about a tenth of a unit of glimmer each time. This is because it already exists. Unlike the ammo, I'm not creating it from raw glimmer," Ghost said.

Ghost hovered over to the metal bar stock that I had dropped. "Now for raw material I would need to create an engram, like everything else, but then printing the engram from glimmer would take extra glimmer."

I watched as Ghost turned the corroded metal stock into a small pile of glimmer, then vanished the glimmer with another beam of data. "Why though?" I asked. I detached my revolver from the magnetic strip at my belt. "What's the difference between say, my hand gun here, and an ingot of iron? Logic says that the iron should be easier due to the fact that it's only iron, and not all the materials that make up my gun."

Ghost bobbed in a motion that I took as a shrug. "I dunno," it said. "I wasn't given that knowledge when I was created."

Hope filled me and I crossed my arms and tapped my foot as I thought. I was unwilling to just give up on this. It made sense to me that if Ghost could print unlimited bullets as long as we had the glimmer, it could also make raw materials. I needed more information.

"What are the criteria when you're printing something?" I asked.

"Density, volume, mass and elemental complexity, increasing exponentially as what I print gets bigger," Ghost listed obediently. "Do you have an idea?"

I tapped my lips with an index finger, then held it up. "Maybe," I hedged. "My guns and armor and ammo aren't solid, but the cordite in the bullets is pretty complex chemically. Maybe it has something to do with the space between atoms? Or, hell, just air between components. What about… what if you were to make a hollow ingot? Or a thin bar or sheet or something of the material?"

"That could work..." Ghost said slowly. But then it sagged. "Still need to make an engram of it first, so I have a plan to work from."

I shrugged, still unwilling to believe that this couldn't be done. "I'm sure we can find something," I insisted.

"And then we still need the glimmer," Ghost went on.

"There will be plenty of guns and drugs and what not to convert out there," I said with a smile. Then, I gestured grandly to the rest of the shop. "And we have a building full of broken down machines and rusty stock to begin with."

oooOOOooo

Turned out that Ghost had a limit of how much glimmer at once it could store; Twenty five thousand units. One of the plans I had floating around in my brain was a glimmer storage unit, but like the fabricator, it was out of my reach with the parts and material I currently had available to me.

It took Ghost the rest of the night to break down what I could, but we got more than I thought we would from the machines on the floor. There were still more than three-fourths of the shop floor that had machines and left over stock, so we had plenty of glimmer for now.

Our next step was to find somewhere that we could get material that Ghost could make an engram out of, so while I cleaned and maintained my guns, I had Ghost browse the deep web for another gang stronghold we could hit.

I had my shotgun disassembled on the desk in front of me and was oiling the trigger mechanism when Ghost made a thoughtful noise.

"Hmm..."

Carefully putting the trigger down on a cloth, I wiped my hands on another clean rag. "Find something interesting?" I asked. My chair swiveled to face me toward Ghost who was transmitting and receiving streams of data from my monster of a phone.

"Well… maybe," Ghost muttered. "It's not what we were looking for, but… the E88 have an arms shipment coming in the city."

My interest was piqued. "Oh?"

Ghost made an affirmative nose.

"When?"

"Tonight."

I was out of my chair and sealing my helmet before Ghost finished saying that one word. Dashing from the room, I was almost down the stairs before Ghost's cry of "Wait!" made me stop and turn around.

Back in the room I asked impatiently, "What?"

Ghost turned to face my shotgun components.

"Oh, right..."

While I reassembled my shotgun, Ghost filled me in on the details of the arms shipment. The barrel of the shotgun slid silently into place and I turned the retaining screw to keep it where it belonged before moving onto the trigger. "Which direction is the truck supposed to be coming from?" I asked. My tongue stuck out the corner of my mouth as I turned the small torx screw that held the trigger to the stock.

"It's a Kroger truck, tractor-trailer type, and it's coming in from..." Ghost trailed off as it parsed the data. "It's coming from the north-west, along Interstate 3."

Frowning, I stopped fiddling with my gun and looked at Ghost. "An eighteen wheeler?" I asked with disbelief. "How many guns are they moving in?"

"Not many. But heavier stuff, like high caliber rifles and… huh, really?" Ghost trailed off, muttering about war zones, and something being ridiculous.

"What?" I prompted.

Ghost's answer was quiet and disbelieving. "An M47 Dragon missile launcher."

My eyes widened under my helmet, and I swear I was salivating. I could feel my heartbeat quicken and my hands started to shake.

"I need it."

The room darkened slightly as Ghost cut off its data stream and let me pick the phone up. I put the phone in one of my belt pouches and resumed putting my shotgun back together.

"Oh, I agree," Ghost said, with just as much enthusiasm as I had. "Now, the truck is supposed to be coming through tonight, but they were smart enough to not list times, so once you're ready we'll head out."

Finally finished assembling the gun, I put the bean bag rounds back in the chamber. After the sixth shell, I pumped the fore stock and chambered a shell. Then, I grabbed an empty duffel bag to carry our spoils.

"Lets roll."

Ghost turned to look at me, "That was bad, and you should feel bad."

I dropped my 'cool' pose, and slumped a little, "Yeah, you're right."

oooOOOooo

My hideout wasn't too far from the Interstate, only about five miles east of the highway. So it didn't take me too long to get there. Looking around for a bit to get my bearings, I spotted a billboard, plastered with the face of a sleazy, ambulance chasing law firm that would make a good lookout point. As I blinked up to the catwalk that ran along the front of it, I briefly wondered if Emma's father worked for that particular firm.

Putting that out of my mind, I made myself comfortable and watched the highway. It was almost midnight and traffic was surprisingly heavy for this time of night. I was facing north west and watching as cars passed underneath.

Ghost hovered next to me browsing the internet through my phone that I held in my right hand.

"So. How are we going to identify which Kroger truck is supposed to have the shipment?" I asked.

"Checking now," Ghost said shortly. It was quiet for a few seconds then it said, "I just found Kroger's shipment schedule. Now, assuming that no trucks are running late or really early, we should be able to spot which truck is not on schedule. Then, you stop it, and take the weapons you want."

"And then what?" I prompted.

"Well, we can only take so many of the guns with us," Ghost explained. "I'd suggest you destroy the truck."

"What about glimmering the others?" I asked.

"I'm still full up on glimmer, sorry," Ghost apologized.

"But, I'm assuming there will be food on that truck," I stated. "I mean, it's an eighteen wheeler… They can't have that many guns on it."

"Do you have any better ideas?" Ghost questioned.

With a sigh, I shrugged. I couldn't think of anything else to do with the weapons. But, I could always waylay the truck. Do some damage and leave it stranded in the middle of the highway. I could have Ghost call the PRT and the police and then get out of there before they showed. I'd get my choice guns, the cops could make a bust and the E88 would be short on new weapons. I explained my plan to Ghost, and it agreed that my plan was good.

We spent the next half hour playing a game of trying to identify the makes and models of the passing cars. Even before I got holes in my memory, I would have been bad at this game. I was never much into cars. Instead books were my thing. Ghost trounced me, until I realized that it was still connected through the internet and was cross referencing online.

Eventually, Ghost cautioned me that it was the most likely time for the truck to come through. Sure enough, I spotted a fifty-two foot semi truck barreling down the highway. Decals that showed the Kroger logo were on the cab of the truck and on the side of the trailer.

"Show time," I breathed.

My blink carried me to the middle lane of the highway, and my sudden arrival startled drivers, sending them swerving to avoid hitting me. As I stood there, the semi-truck slammed on the brakes, and its tires shrieked their protest. The tractor and trailer began to jack-knife as the vehicle came to a stop just five meters away from me.

Detaching my revolver from my belt, I pointed it at the panicked looking driver.

"Out!" I barked at him.

He scrambled from the cab of the vehicle, missing the ladder down and landing painfully on the asphalt. Before he had the chance to get to his feet, I approached him, and pulled up the sleeves on his shirt. There, on his right shoulder was an iron eagle clutching a wreath with a swastika in it.

"Thought so," I sneered, and I pistol-whipped him into unconsciousness.

Walking around to the back of the trailer, people were honking their horns and swearing out the windows of their cars. At least until I came into view, then they got really quiet. I fired two shots into the air, and the people at the front of the jam panicked. They got out of their vehicles and began to run back down the highway.

"Don't worry about calling the authorities, Ghost," I said. "I'm pretty sure one of them will do it for us."

Ghost laughed as I readied my gun, just in case there were guards in the trailer. I didn't think there would be. If the Empire were willing to go to this amount of deception, I doubted they would also ship gang members as guards with it. Sure enough, as I ripped the doors open, nothing but a refrigerated trailer greeted me, loaded with groceries. For the life of me, I couldn't locate any gun crates.

"Well, this is disappointing," I sighed.

"They probably packed the guns in the product boxes," Ghost pointed out. "Remember, that grocery store was rumored to be an E88 storehouse."

"Good point," I conceded.

I hopped up into the back of the trailer, and Ghost materialized in front of me. It began to scan the boxes while I started ripping them open. Eventually, Ghost called to me from further in the trailer.

"Guardian, over here!"

Clambering over the stacked boxes and wrapped pallets of produce, I made my way toward the front of the trailer where Ghost was. When I finally caught up with it, Ghost was streaming data at a pallet of stacked orange boxes.

"Did you find something?" I asked. "I had no luck at the back. There may not be any guns on the trailer."

"Oh, there are, alright," Ghost countered. "They're in here."

"That's it?" I said disbelievingly, as I started rifling through the boxes, throwing oranges all over the trailer.

"It makes sense," Ghost explained.

"How?"

Ghost moved its data stream to another box. "This one, Guardian," it told me. "Shipping a few guns in an entire produce shipment would mean that if an anonymous tip were to be given, the authorities would have to search the entire trailer. Laziness abounds, Guardian."

I conceded the point as I tore into the indicated box. Buried amongst the oranges was a beautiful gun. Or, pieces of one. It was a high caliber sniper rifle, each component wrapped in plastic and stored among the fruit. I took all the parts I could locate, my power telling me when I found them all, and placed them in my duffel bag, while Ghost continued scanning the stack of boxes.

"Here it is, Guardian," Ghost told me, almost reverently. Dropping the duffel bag, I ripped into the indicated box.

Ghost didn't have to tell me what was in there. I knew. The dragon missile launcher was packaged similarly to the sniper rifle, and I didn't stop until I had all its components. Gently, almost adoringly, I put them in the bag with the other gun.

"Anything else worth taking, Ghost?" I asked. "Ammo for these guns?"

Answering negatively, Ghost told me, "No. Just some small arms weapons."

I was debating taking them anyway, when I heard the sound of sirens filter in through the opening of the trailer. So, I grabbed my bag and climbed my way back out of the trailer. Listening to the sirens, I estimated that I had about ten minutes before they arrived. Plenty of time to escape.

But then, my motion tracker lit up a bright red, and I threw myself to the side as a white blur slammed into the road, cratering it and peppering me with fragments of asphalt. An unstoppable wave of terror washed over me. Then, as the dust cleared, I saw why.

Occupying the middle of the crater, in a perfect three point landing was Glory Girl. She straightened up, and planted her hands on her hips, and sneered at me.

"And here I thought my patrol tonight was going to be boring."

Last edited: Oct 7, 2017

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Right between the eyes.

Feb 13, 2017

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#256

Thanks be unto WirelessGrapes, for without him, my writing would be flawed. Well, more so. Comment, critique, discuss. I love you people.

When I was a little girl, I used to imagine what I would say if I ever met an actual, honest-to-God, hero. Growing up in Brockton Bay, one of the biggest cape cities in the United States, you'd think that citizens would run into heroes and villains around every corner. But the reality of it was that, with the ratio of normal people to parahumans being easily ten thousand to one, encounters with one out and about were very rare.

Most people only met a parahuman at a PRT sanctioned event where the Wards or a few select Protectorate members would shake hands and sign eight by ten glossy head shots of themselves. In fact, as a little girl, I could remember my parents taking me to the Brockton Bay Mall, where I got words of encouragement from Armsmaster himself, and an autographed photo of Miss Militia, both of whom I idolized right next to Alexandria.

But never in my wildest dreams did I think I would have a one on one encounter with a hero. Much less like the one that evening seemed to be playing out. I sure as hell didn't think I would say what came out of my mouth next.

"This isn't what it looks like," I blurted.

Genius.

Absolutely genius.

"Riiiiight," Glory Girl drawled cynically. "I'm sure you just happened to be sneaking through the area when this happened."

"Okay, maybe this is what it looks like, but I swear, I'm not a villain," I pleaded.

"Uh huh," Glory Girl's voice was as flat and disbelieving as her stare.

"I don't think you're gonna get out of this without a fight, Guardian," Ghost told me dryly.

"I've gotta at least try," I insisted.

Through the speakers, I said, "Seriously, go check the driver, he's a Nazi," I told her, pointing at the unconscious man on the asphalt. He groaned weakly. "Look at his arm."

Glory Girl let out a short, sarcastic laugh. "Right, and take my eyes off you?" She shook her head. "I think I'll put you down first, then check on the driver."

"Are you just dense, or does the blonde stereotype actually apply with you?" I snapped.

"You're not helping," Ghost told me in a sing-song voice.

Glory Girl jabbed an index finger my way. "You're asking for a beating, aren't you?" she said mockingly.

With a sigh, I walked to the edge of the highway, and set my duffel bag down by the guard rail. It seemed that a fight was unavoidable here. Glory Girl was being belligerent and her aura was setting my hair on end. This wasn't how I wanted to make my public debut, beating on a well known and popular hero. But it seemed that fate had other plans for that evening.

Straightening up, I turned back to Glory Girl. A gust of cold wind blew across the road, ruffling Glory Girl's knee length white and gold trimmed dress, and making my coat flap like a flag. Glory Girl hadn't moved, she just watched me warily, her blue eyes narrowed with suspicion. As the wind passed, a few flurries started to fall.

"Well," I said softly. I turned my body sideways, showing my profile to Glory Girl and beckoned her to me with my left hand. In my right, my revolver materialized hidden from her view. "Come on then."

Glory Girl rocketed toward me, flying at chest height, her fists out stretched.

I jumped, using my Light to help propel myself up, and flipped over her. My gun cracked three times as I squeezed off rounds as she passed beneath me. The bullets didn't do anything, and I didn't expect them to. From what I could remember, her powers consisted of super strength and invulnerability, both with some strange twist. Also, she had an aura that either caused fear or admiration, depending on how she felt about you.

Right now, I was terrified. But, if what Ghost had told me was true, Guardians ate fear for breakfast, and I was hungry.

...That sounded better in my head.

The heroine stopped just short of plowing through the steel guard rail and she turned to face me, hovering in the air. She struck a pose, her hands on her hips, both feet pointed down beneath her, and her head at a cocky angle.

"You really didn't think that'd work, did you?" she asked, incredulously.

I shrugged carelessly, then snapped off two more shots at her face. The first one hit, and the second one only missed by a margin of millimeters as Glory Girl flew to the side. I took the opportunity to jump and hover away from her, putting distance between the two of us.

"Can you scan her or something?" I asked through the comm, watching as Glory Girl banked hard in the air and flew toward me again.

"Of course, Guardian," Ghost replied curiously. "But why?"

As Glory Girl flew at me, fists outstretched again, I blinked upward and left a burning sun spot in my place. I watched her brake hard to avoid flying into the sphere of solar death, and I took the opportunity to fire my last round at her back. It flattened against her shoulder, and she gasped, shielding her face and flying backward as fast as she could go.

Interesting.

As I floated gently back to the asphalt, I answered Ghost. "Because I need to know her weakness," I said, Blinking backward to distance myself from my opponent.

"What makes you think she has a weakness?" Ghost inquired cheekily.

"Everyone has a weakness."

"Oh?" Ghost seemed genuinely curious. "What's yours then?"

"Not the time Ghost!" I shouted. Glory Girl had reversed direction and was throwing haymaker punches at my face, and it took everything I had to dodge and weave out of the way. Eventually, I stepped inside her guard, and planted my elbow in her solar plexus. Oddly enough, my shield was blinking red at me with the impact, signaling that it had been depleted. My arm felt like I had just elbowed a brick wall too.

I ignored it, and leveraging Glory Girl's arm over my shoulder, flipped her to the ground. She grunted, the asphalt beneath her back shattering with the impact. But other than that, nothing else happened. I blinked backward again, and reloaded my gun, flicking the cylinder open and shaking the empty cartridges out where they clattered and pinged on the tarmac.

As Glory Girl staggered back to her feet dizzily, I chambered six new rounds, flicked the cylinder shut, and pulled the hammer back.

Ghost took her momentary disorientation to materialize from my armor and fly up over head, periodically scanning down at the heroine.

"You know I'm invulnerable, right?" Glory Girl asked me, finally making it to her feet. She swept some dust from the skirt of her dress and glared my direction.

"Yeah, probably," I replied nonchalantly. "But I'll figure it out eventually. The longer this fight goes on, the more certain it is I'll win."

"Ha! Yeah right!"

I sighed exaggeratedly, shook my head and turned to face my profile toward the heroine. If I could beat her without finding her weakness, fantastic, but all I needed to do was stall her until Ghost could give me the results of it's scan. So all I needed to do was piss her off enough that she would be predictable and careless.

"Well, come on then, Barbie," I taunted, gesturing for her to come. My revolver was hidden behind my profile. "I'd tell you to do your worst, but you probably already are..."

With a scream of rage, Glory Girl rocketed toward me, the pavement beneath her cracking from the force of her take-off. I blinked and hovered backward, weaving between and over the abandoned cars, and taking shots where I could. Her attacks were wild and sloppy, but by the damage she was doing to the asphalt and the cars around us, I knew I couldn't take a hit without receiving near lethal damage. Ghost could probably revive me, but I didn't want to play that card just yet. And I didn't want to traumatize a hero. Well, too much.

Eventually, I noticed a pattern. Whenever Glory Girl would take a hit from my gun, or from my solar fire, she would dodge the next couple of bullets I would fire at her. It suddenly clicked, when after having baited her into flying through a car, she dodged my return fire.

Her invulnerability was limited.

She could take a hit, pretty much any hit no matter how hard, but then her invulnerability had to 'recharge'.

At the same time I came to that epiphany, Ghost said, "Hmm, interesting."

"What's that?" I replied, blinking up into the air. As I floated down, I rained orbs of solar fire down at my opponent.

Glory Girl responded by flying up at me, and I blinked back to the roadway, then danced away from where I landed to put distance between us. Glory Girl shouted something at me but I ignored it in favor of listening to Ghost.

"She is covered by a very thin layer of energy in a frequency I can't quite pin down," Ghost explained. It paused, pulsing a few more bursts of scan, then went on. "It seems that every time you hit her with an attack, that energy pops like a bubble, but very quickly returns."

"How quick?" I asked.

I watched as Glory Girl flew down to the asphalt and ripped a chunk of it up, before hurling it at me like a discus. It missed by a few feet, but the boulder of rock and tar skittered across the road and came dangerously close to hitting the unconscious truck driver. My eyes went back and forth between the heroine and her almost victim in disbelief. I needed to end this quickly, or she was going to seriously hurt someone.

...Someone that wasn't me.

Ghost replied to my question. "Depending on how hard you hit her?" It paused. "Microseconds."

With a stifled groan, I fired a few more shots at Glory Girl. Sure enough, the first one hit her, and she dodged the rest. It was frustrating, if impressive that she could dodge bullets. But beyond that, it told me that she was well aware of her own weakness.

"Suggestions?" I prompted.

The blonde heroine flew at me again, and I resumed my own dodging.

"Hold still, you slippery bitch!" Glory Girl screamed, her face red with anger.

I couldn't help it, I laughed. But in doing so, I took my eyes from my opponent for just a second, and that was all she needed to rip a light pole from its anchoring and swing it at me. I wasn't quick enough to dodge, and the metal pole caught me in the midsection. My shield absorbed what it could, ribs broke, my HUD screamed warnings at me and I bounced across the asphalt like a soccer ball.

When I finally stopped moving and opened my eyes, the inside of my visor was splattered with blood from my mouth, but I was alive. Somehow. Warnings continued to flash all over my HUD, as I took stock of how badly I was hurt. It was pretty bad. I could barely breathe due to the right side of my ribcage being crushed, and I was pretty sure that my left leg was broken. I couldn't feel my right arm.

"Ouch..." I moaned.

Ghost came to over in my view of the snowing sky. It looked down at me and said, "You could not get hit, for one," it drawled sarcastically.

Despite the pain, I laughed again. I staggered my way to my feet. It felt like my bones were knitting back together, contusions healing and organs unrupturing. Ghost hadn't mentioned that I regenerated too, but I could feel myself healing.

It was emboldening, knowing that I was practically invincible as well as immortal. I still felt pain, but if I got hit, I would regenerate. If it was enough to kill me, Ghost had said that it could bring me back.

Turning my head to the left, I cracked my neck, then I repeated the action to the right. Glory Girl was standing about ten meters away, gaping at me, a stunned expression on her face. Keeping my eyes on her, I stepped over to where my revolver was lying on the asphalt and picked it up, then checked that there was no damage. It's mechanisms seemed fine, but the nice, shiny chrome finish was scraped and flaking.

I frowned at that. The revolver was easily my favorite gun. It felt right in my hands. I turned and looked back at Glory Girl. "I told you," I said firmly, "This fight is over."

Glory Girl shook her head slowly as if she couldn't believe what had just happened. I couldn't blame her; I could hardly believe it myself. "You just took that. And got back up..." she said.

"That's right."

Slowly, frighteningly, a nasty smile spread across her face.

"I don't have to hold back," she whispered, almost gleeful at the realization. Jeez, this girl had issues.

I knew what was coming next, and I realized that it was my chance to end the fight. Glory Girl once more rocketed toward me, her fist cocked back to deliver a pulverizing blow. As she neared me, I reached out, my hand open and palm toward her, and unleashed a torrent of solar fire. It billowed forth and enveloped her and she reacted by rotating upright and trying to fly up and out of my fire. As she cleared the top of my flame, I aimed my gun, and put a .50 caliber round right in the meat of her thigh.

Glory Girl gasped, her hands shot to her leg and she dropped from the air, falling ten feet like a stone. She landed heavily, and began to rock back and forth, moaning in pain. I had figured that being invulnerable, she wouldn't be used to feeling pain. Sure enough, her pain threshold was low enough that shooting her in the leg was enough to end the fight.

The wound looked pretty bad though, the entry wound was pretty small, but the exit wound on the back of her leg looked like so much hamburger. My handgun was a very large caliber, and I wasn't too confident that she wouldn't bleed out before the authorities arrived.

Thinking quickly, I surrounded my hands with solar fire and held them on either side of her leg, on the entry and exit wounds, until the heat literally cauterized them shut.

Glory Girl screamed, her fingers turning the asphalt beneath her into gravel, then her eyes glazed over. I waved my hand in front of her face and called her name a few times, trying to get her attention but she was quickly going into shock.

So, I grabbed her lower jaw and forced her to look at me. Her eyes widened in fear, and I suppressed the surge of guilt over what I had done.

"Listen to me," I ordered her. "You'll survive. The cops are on their way. That truck was hauling arms for the Empire. I need you to tell them this."

Glory Girl's eyes started to cloud again, so I shook her, hard, and she came around again.

"Do you understand? Nod if you do."

She nodded.

Nothing else to say, I let go of Glory Girl and went to retrieve my duffel bag. Our fight had moved pretty far from the semi, but I was quick. I picked the bag up, and turning back to the east, fled the scene.

oooOOOooo

Once I was far enough away from the scene of the fight that I was sure I wouldn't be found, I halted my retreat and tried to gather my scattered thoughts. My heart was racing and I could feel my blood pumping in my ears. I pulled my helmet off, letting Ghost dematerialize it into an engram, and did my best to not throw up.

That whole situation could have gone belly up really fast, and I realized that I had been extremely lucky that it ended up as well as it had. The fact that I regenerated, unknowingly, was the only reason I won that fight. And even then, Glory Girl could have killed me out right, had it not been for my armor and shields.

Any other non-brute parahuman would have been demolished, literally, which opened a whole other can of worms. Did that girl know the meaning of restraint?

True, I had managed to get away with my spoils, and in doing so managed to deny the Empire more guns, but I had to fight a hero to do so. Winning was honestly the best of the worst options. My original plan; hitting the truck, getting in, out and away with no one being any the wiser was what I needed to happen.

Now, I was pretty sure that Glory Girl was going to say she lost to a villain. I didn't need any more notoriety with the local heroes. Hell, I fought my way out of a police station at the start of my career. It didn't matter that Ghost found out that no one was seriously, or more accurately, in a city that was famous for Panacea, permanently injured. That kind of thing is frowned upon.

The fight itself could have gone much better too, just in technique. I knew I was better than I had performed. But when Glory Girl lost her temper, and I laughed, I took that light pole like a rookie. I should have focused, dodged and ended the fight then.

My heart beat returning to a normal speed, I took my helmet back from Ghost and continued my way to my hideout with my new toys. I itched to put my Dragon missile launcher together, and my mind was almost spinning with ideas on how to upgrade the weapon. Tracking, proximity detonation, even fragmentation rounds. And then adding an element to the weapon!

I was practically salivating.

Finally, I arrived at the shop, and made sure to lock the door behind me. Up in the office, I removed my phone from its pouch then I set it and the duffel on the foreman's desk- well, my desk. I doubted the foreman would ever be back for it. Taking out the parts one by one, I segregated them, laying them on the desk in the order they assembled. On the left side of the desk was the missile launcher. On the right was the sniper rifle. I couldn't decide which weapon to assemble first, so I asked Ghost.

"You're asking me?" Ghost exclaimed. "I don't know. You shoot things. I just surf the 'net and open doors for you."

"Some help you are," I playfully griped.

Ghost blew a raspberry at me, then proceeded to go back online.

I tinkered with my weapons for a bit, but like most of my other ideas, I couldn't do much until I made a Glimmer fabricator. Still, my newest weapons were finished. The Dragon missile launcher took up a meter and a half of the desk, and across from it, by the corpse of the old computer was the sniper rifle; a Barrett .50 caliber rifle. Unfortunately it didn't have a scope, but that could be remedied easily enough.

Not taking my eyes off my new weapons, I said, "Hey, Ghost, can you encode these now?"

"Yeah, sure," Ghost replied distractedly. "Just let me finish up here."

Thirty seconds passed, and I finally tore my gaze away from the guns and turned to Ghost. It hadn't budged from the phone, data constantly transmitting to and from it and the device. I frowned, and snatched the phone off the desk.

"Hey!" Ghost protested.

"What's your attention so captured anyways?" I asked.

Ghost hesitated, looked down and away, and when it finally replied, it sounded embarrassed. "It's… a forum," it said softly. "Called 'PHO'."

"I know of it," I said. Scrolling through the website, I saw that Ghost had made an account with the user name 'Light-Brite', and it's post count was already above one hundred. "What are you doing on it?"

There was no hesitation this time. Only indignation.

"Defending you!"

I tapped on a few links and eventually found the thread that talked about me. It wasn't too long, at least not compared to some of the other hot topics, but it was still very new. I had, after all, only been active for a little over two weeks at that point. Most of the posts were negative, with only a few people, Ghost included on my side. More worrying was that I had been outed from day one.

It wasn't that much of a surprise though. There were links to the various recordings of my escape from the police station, and a few photos of me out and about. I watched one of the videos of my escape, and winced at the officer getting crushed by the thrown desk.

However, what struck me as hilarious was that people thought that Ghost was the parahuman. A tinker with the unheard of power to reanimate and grant powers to corpses. The PRT had given Ghost the tentative cape name of 'Necromancer'. I laughed at that, and gave the phone back to Ghost.

"Thank you, Ghost," I said kindly. "I mean it. You're a good friend."

Ghost seemed to glow, and it's occulus squinted at me in what I realized was it's version of a smile.

Going back to my notebook, I started to write down the ideas I had to improve my new weapons. But as I wrote and drew, my mind strayed. Despite evidence to the contrary, the common opinion was that I was still dead. My thoughts drifted to my parents and how they must be feeling. They thought I was dead, reanimated by some villainous tinker. Meanwhile, I'm actually gallivanting about the city, punching Nazis and stealing their guns.

The Guardian in me was warning that it would be a terrible idea to go back, but the Taylor in me, the part that missed and still loved her family beat the crap out of the Guardian and told her to 'stuff it'.

I closed the notebook. "Ghost," I said. I waited until I had Ghost's attention. "We're going home."

Last edited: Feb 13, 2017

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Right between the eyes.

Mar 4, 2017

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#333

Sorry for the delay, I blame Horizion: Zero Dawn and work. Also some other stuff in real life, but that's not important now. Here's the new chapter.

It took more willpower than I thought it would to take those first steps out of my hideout. I shouldn't have been as apprehensive as I was, but I hesitated. I must have left the building and turned around half a dozen times, with just as many excuses.

There was a dissonance between my two selves. Normal-me really wanted to go home and see mom and dad, but Guardian-me was in agreement with Ghost in that it was incredibly dangerous, and reckless. I paced back and forth for the better part of a day, arguing with myself and listing reasons why and why not to go.

I might be able to find answers there. Probably. I vaguely remembered something about keeping journals. I didn't remember about what exactly, but they might help fill the gaps in my memory. On the other hand, I was a teenage girl. There was a very good chance the my journals were more of a diary, where I gushed about which boy I liked, or the latest fashion trends.

I doubted that, honestly. My memory may have been spotty, but I was sure that I wasn't that kind of a girl. When we were kids, Emma used to make fun of me for being a bit of a tomboy. I never got into pop culture, instead preferring to read, and go outside and catch bugs, and frogs, and play in the dirt.

Still, I couldn't fully recall, so there was a chance.

On the one hand, I missed my parents something fierce. It was almost a physical ache inside of me, and I could only imagine just how my parents felt. They most likely thought I was dead and they deserved to know that I wasn't. Well, not completely dead. Mostly dead.

Undead.

Close enough.

Which was worrisome in itself. What would I say? "Hi Mom and Dad! I died, but I'm back! Don't worry, I'm not the bad kind of undead..."

On the other hand, I was very much wanted. The authorities would think that the most likely place I would visit would be home, and they weren't really wrong. I did want to go there, and I was going to. Eventually.

More so than that, was the fact that according to PHO, the authorities thought I was some kind of meat puppet, dancing to the tune of a villainous tinker that reanimated corpses, and they probably had no qualms about vaporizing me on sight. In fact, there were rumblings that people were pushing for a kill order for Ghost. Or, Necromancer, as they called it.

I stood at the exit of my hideout, looking through the murky, wire-mesh reinforced glass with a thousand yard stare as I thought. If I was going to go, I needed to go soon. Get it over with. Night had fallen, and the moon was new, so visibility would be low. The street lights in my old neighborhood were spotty at best, so that would only help my mission. And my visor had a low light mode.

So, I left. I stuck to the rooftops and made good time north. My thoughts were my own, and Ghost was likewise silent. Or it was browsing the internet, but regardless, it was silent.

When I past Tenth Avenue, I knew that I was in my old neighborhood. A few blocks more north, and about a mile east and I would be home. But my initial target wasn't my home. It was slightly north of my house. There, at the corner of Third and Oak street was an abandoned and condemned apartment complex that the residents around here nicknamed "The Eyesore".

It stood an impressive twenty stories tall, and used to house ten units on each floor. But the owner of the building was never able fill the complex, eventually abandoning it. The residents who did live there moved on, and the city determined that it would be cheaper and easier to just cordon off the area and leave the building to rot.

That was almost fifteen years ago. Now, the building stood there, windows broken out all the way up to the top, and the brickwork faded with weather and age.

It was perfect for what I needed. I scaled the outside of the building with my Blink, pausing around the fifteenth floor for a recharge before Blinking to the top. From up here, I would be able to survey almost all of the neighborhood and determine the best route to my home.

Sure, I may have been stalling for time. I was still nervous about going home. But recon was important. If the PRT and police were patrolling, I didn't want to have to fight any of them. I still felt guilty about my flight from the police station and wanted to avoid any collateral. They were the good guys after all.

I walked to the edge of the roof and peered down. From up here, the urban blight and decay was more than evident and my heart hurt to see my home city in such a state. But I focused away from that, and paid more attention to the patrol cars and PRT vans I could spot.

One advantage of being this high, Ghost was able to intercept their communications.

"It seems they're using standard two-way radios," Ghost told me. I could hear the disbelief in it's voice. "This world has tinkertech. Why on earth would they use such mundane technology?"

I shrugged and replied, "No idea. Maybe budget?"

"Perhaps."

Continuing my vigil, I asked, "Is this a good, or a bad thing?"

"Oh, it's good," Ghost answered immediately. "Very good. It means that as they communicate, I can pinpoint their exact locations and track them."

Finally, we had a lucky break.

It only took moments for Ghost to work out the patrol routes, and it conveniently marked them with a wi-fi symbol. I jumped from the roof, flaring my Light at five meters from the ground and landed gracefully. Then, I made my way in.

It was almost trivial to avoid the patrols with Ghost pointing them out for me, and I made it to the house without incident. But when I got there, my nerve left me again, and I found myself simply standing on the street and staring.

So many bad thoughts were whirling through my head, snippets of who I used to be coming to the forefront. My head was spinning. I wanted to turn and run, go back to my hideout where things were familiar. Safe.

"Guardian," Ghost said softly. Encouragingly.

I shook my head. This had been a bad idea.

"I know, I know," I whispered. "But we're here now, right? May as well?"

Ghost was unhelpfully silent. I crept up to the house and across the front lawn. The dry grass crunched quietly underfoot as I approached the picture window that graced the front of the house. When I reached the house, I leaned against the facade, and peered over my shoulder, through the window into the living room. It was dark inside, lit only by the flickering of the TV on the stand against the wall, and the light filtering in from the kitchen. It highlighted details that were quickly coming back to me, my spotty memory filling in.

I remembered sitting on the couch with mom and dad watching Saturday morning cartoons while eating cereal and toast. I remembered pictures hanging on the wall, dad's obsessiveness with keeping them straight. I could remember the day our ancient flat screen television fell over and our trip to the electronics store for a new one. We decided to splurge and got a top of the line Sony 'Slim-line' television.

I remembered dad's recliner, a ratty, worn, fake leather thing that mom constantly tried to get him to get rid of, but he would have none of it.

But, I didn't recognize the man sitting in it currently.

He was wearing boxers and a stained tank top, and sat slouched and staring at the television screen. In one hand he clutched loosely the remote control for the television, and in the other was a mostly empty bottle. From my position at the window, I couldn't tell what it was, but it was too dark to be beer, or at least I thought. I mean, I was a teenage girl. I didn't know alcohol.

My memories told me I knew this man, but for the life of me I couldn't place his features. His posture was slumped, and his eyes half lidded and dull behind his glasses. As I watched, he reached to the small side table beside the chair and exchanged the empty bottle for a smaller one, this one with a lighter liquid in it. He took a swig and put it down again.

I turned away in disgust. My memories were coming up blank, but I felt shame watching this man, in my house. I needed to get to my bedroom and see if any of my stuff was there. It should be, but with this unfamiliar yet familiar man in my living room, I felt that anything could happen at this point.

Working my way silently around to the side of the house, I located my bedroom window. Blinking made a distinctive 'whoosh' noise when I traveled with it, so in this instance, I opted to simply jump up. My Light gave me the boost I needed to make it the ten feet up, and I clung to the eave above the window, using the sill to place my feet.

I pushed up on the window and cursed silently when it wouldn't open. Of course it would be locked. I peered inside, and was relieved to see that it was still my room. Nostalgia filled me, despite having only been away from it for a few weeks. My bed was rumpled, and clothes littered the floor. The closet was half open and I could see hangars on the rod with no clothes hung on them. My night stand had a lamp, and an alarm clock on it that was blinking 6:12 at me. I guessed that the power had cut out some time ago.

My gaze continued to scan around the darkened room, looking for my likely hiding place for my journals. Like many other things, I couldn't quite recall. It was hazy, like looking through a foggy window. But no matter how much I tried, I just couldn't dredge up the memories.

I needed to get inside and search.

"Hey, Ghost," I whispered needlessly. My internal comms would keep my voice from carrying, but it still felt appropriate here. "If I can get you inside, can you unlatch the window?"

I could almost feel the exasperation in Ghost's reply.

"I do electronic locks, Guardian, we've been over this," It drawled.

Ghost couldn't feel my flat gaze through the visor of my helmet, but it fidgeted it like it could. Well, perhaps it actually could. But regardless, it finally relented.

"Get me in, and I'll try," it muttered.

Holding up a finger, I concentrated solar at the tip and formed my plasma cutter again. This time, it was blunt and short, and I focused on heat more than force. As I focused, the flame turned blue, then white, and when it did, I pushed my finger through the glass of the window. It passed through like a hot knife through butter, molten glass dripping down the rest of the window. I circled my finger around enough to make a hole that was wide enough for my hand to pass through, then cut the flame. Once my whole hand was inside, Ghost dematerialized, then rematerialized above my open palm.

It floated over to the latch at the top of the window and bumped at it ineffectively for a few moments. Then, it hooked one of it's spines on the lever of the latch and pulled. After a moment, the latch gave with a quiet click, and I was was able to lift the window and enter my room.

I had to be honest with myself; it felt odd, like stepping into another reality. My death and subsequent resurrection had changed me on a fundamental level, and being here, in this room felt wrong, like I no longer belonged here. But I had a mission in mind; find the journals and any other clues to my past.

With no clue where to start, I randomly picked my dresser. I softly padded across the worn carpet and slowly pulled the top drawer. As I rummaged through the contents, which seemed to me socks and underwear; including a pair of panties with Armsmaster's logo and visage on it, to my chagrin, I directed Ghost on what to look for.

"I'm pretty sure I kept my journals in spiral notebooks," I said, pushing the socks to the side. "So, look for the metal of the binding, that'll be your best bet."

"Yes, Guardian," Ghost replied eagerly, and a bit nervously. "Where should I start?"

I pushed the top drawer in and pulled the next one out. It occurred to me that I should probably take some clothes too. They would be handy if- no when I had to go out in public. Reopening the top drawer, I materialized my duffel bag and put a some of the underwear and socks in.

"Closet first," I said eventually. Back in the second drawer, shirts, I put a few of the tee shirts and some of my more feminine, spaghetti strap tops in as well. I didn't find my journals, but one of the tees sparked a memory of my mother and myself.

Every summer, she and I would plant a vegetable garden, while my dad did the other yard work. My mother was a literary professor at Brockton Bay University, so she would constantly bring up books and works that featured gardens and gardening. The only one I could remember, though, was Through the Looking Glass, where Alice was in the garden of talking flowers.

I smiled fondly, and placed that shirt softly in the bag as well.

"I'm not finding anything in here, Guardian," Ghost whispered, its spotlight flashed in the darkness of the closet and it swept back and forth.

"Try under the bed," I said, closing the shirt drawer and opening the one below, pants. The journals weren't in there either, but I took a few pairs of jeans.

Ghost floated out of the closet and darted under the bed, its light shining out from underneath. A moment passed before Ghost said, "It's filthy under here."

I rolled my eyes in exasperation. "Are the journals under there?"

"No."

With that, I had no idea where the journals could be. The trip wasn't pointless, as I was going to pilfer clothing, but I needed the journals. And, my eyes drifted to the top of my vanity, the family photos that were displayed there.

I wandered over and stared at the photos. The first was a picture of myself and Emma, the two of us outside on a swing set, and both of us smiling gap toothed grins. We had to have been seven, maybe eight years old in the photo. The next was a photo of myself, from the day I started high school. In the photo, I was smiling, and looked happy, but my eyes were sad. I remembered that shortly before that was when Emma slammed the door on me, and shut me out of her life.

The final photo was a family photo, taken probably three, maybe four years past. My mother was on the right side, and my father on the left, with me standing in front and in between them. At least, I thought it was my father; he had to be. But what threw me off was, he looked superficially like the man in the recliner, though the man in the photo looked much healthier.

Was the man downstairs actually my dad?

I needed to go talk to him, but again, my resolve fled. I remembered the neglect though not what caused it. My dad drifted, becoming a shell of a man. We stopped talking, stopped spending time with each other. I resented him for that, but…

He was still my dad.

Ghost floated up next to me. "Guardian?" it asked softly.

"That was my dad," I murmured.

"Downstairs?" Ghost clarified?

I nodded.

"Do you want to go talk to him?" Ghost queried?

Did I?

I hesitated, but… yes. I did. I missed him and he deserved to know I was alive.

"Yes, I-"

Both Ghost and I noticed the ping on my motion tracker, light red and behind and to my left. Someone was coming up the stairs, and when I turned to look, my HUD marked a wi-fi symbol coming up the stairs rapidly.

Shit!

I still hadn't found the journals!

Frantically, I grabbed the family photo off the vanity and stuffed it in my duffel, and cast one more frantic look around my room while Ghost dematerialized into my armor.

"The backpack!" Ghost hissed over the comm. "Its the only place we haven't looked."

I stepped over and snatched my pack up. It was full of books, but my augmented strength paid it no mind. I slung it over my shoulder with my duffel and jumped out the window, my duffel bag thunking loudly against the window sill as I fell.

The grass cushioned my landing as I rolled to bleed off momentum from the fall and started to run back west, toward my hideout.

"Target spotted moving west," came a gruff, male voice from the PRT channel. "Moving to engage."

I sped up, running a few meters and Blinking as far as I could to put distance between myself and the PRT troopers who were pursuing me. I could hear the engines of their vehicles fire up behind me.

"Shit shit shit," I chanted, panic lacing my voice. I knew I could take the troopers, but I didn't want to hurt them. "You were right, this was a bad, bad idea."

"There will be time for 'I-told-you-so's' later," Ghost barked. "Now, RUN!"

Between my ability to take to the rooftops, and teleporting fifty meters at a time, I rapidly outpaced the troopers and their vehicles. But then it got worse.

"Fuck, it's fast!" one of the troopers cursed over their radios. "We need parahuman support; Velocity, do you copy?"

"Velocity here, moving to intercept."

Well, shit.

The Daybreak arc is coming to an end. One, maybe two more chapters, then an interlude, and we'll start the Dawning arc. As always, thanks to WirelessGrapes for checking this over. Feel free to discuss and comment. Your likes and comments fuel my muse.

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SniperFrog

Mar 4, 2017

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SniperFrog

SniperFrog

Right between the eyes.

Mar 22, 2017

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#362

Thanks again to WirelessGrapes. He figuratively the best. (I did use figuratively right... right?)

As expected, I outpaced the PRT troopers and left them far behind me. While they may have had vehicles; even as some people suspected, Tinkertech vehicles, they had to stick to roads and throughways. I, however, could cut directly across town as the crow flies. But as fast as I eluded the troopers, Velocity caught up to me just as fast.

I skidded to a halt on the slanted, shingled roof of a two story house on the edge of my neighborhood. I was near the bottom, standing on the eave while Velocity was standing on the peak of the roof, looking down on me.

He looked just like his photos online. He wore a skin tight red suit, two blue stripes running up his sides vertically from his ankles, all the way to his shoulders, where they reversed direction and met in a 'V' at the center of his chest. An opaque red visor covered his eyes, held in place by two devices that covered his ears, of which the one on his right ear had a stubby antenna. His costume had no hood, leaving his auburn hair to wave gently in the night breeze.

His mouth was set in a hard line, and his left hand was on a canister that was attached to his belt at his waist. He made no aggressive move toward me, but I wasn't in trusting mood, so I turned to the right to continue my escape.

"Wait!"

I paused, one foot off the edge and turned to look at Velocity over my shoulder. He had his right hand outstretched toward me, but I noticed that his other hand had never left the canister. Cautiously, I stepped back on the roof.

"Stay out of sight," I said, to Ghost.

Ghost made a thoughtful noise. "Do you have a plan?" It asked.

"He seems to want to talk, so let's see what he wants. Standby."

"Right, Guardian," it replied, falling silent.

Turning to face Velocity, I tilted my head and looked at him through the visor of my helmet.

Velocity brought his hand back to the antenna on his visor and pushed a button, then put his hand by his side. I could tell he was trying to look as non-threatening as possible, but my nerves were on edge because of the canisters on his belt. There was no way I could know what they were. They could be anything from tear gas, to flash bangs, to Dragon's containment foam, but my money was on foam.

"What do you want?" I grunted.

Velocity smiled at me disarmingly. "I'm glad you stopped. I didn't want to have to chase you all over the city," he said. I could hear a slight quiver in his voice.

He was afraid of me.

Part of me was disappointed that a known and respected hero felt fear at my presence and the thought of what I might do, but the other was thrilled that I was getting respect. The respect, I felt, I was overdue.

I stared through my visor at him, every fiber of my being tense and ready to fight or to run. I think he realized that I wasn't going to say anything, so he fidgeted, though his hand never left the canister.

Eventually, Velocity spoke.

"Look, I'm just going to get to the point. You seem like a no nonsense kind of girl," he said. "I need you to come into headquarters with me, and I'd prefer if you did it willingly."

Incredulity filled me. Just like that, he wanted me to give up? No. Not only no, but hell no.

And I said as much.

Velocity sighed, and looked down. I couldn't see his eyes through the opaque visor, but I didn't assume that he would be so inexperienced as to take them off of me.

"Please, don't make this difficult," he said softly.

I scoffed. "I don't see how it's difficult to let me go," I said, trying and failing to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

Velocity's mouth turned down sharply. "Seriously, Taylor? Can I call you Taylor, or do you have a cape name?" he asked.

Part of me was irritated that he'd just out me like that, but rationally I knew that I didn't have a cape identity yet, and they did know who I was. With a shake of my head, I said, "Not yet. I've put some thought it, but..."

"Taylor then. Your debut was rather…" Velocity waved his free hand back and forth, searching for the right word. "Explosive. That's frowned upon, but not necessarily the worst thing ever. But the guys I work for, the PRT, just need you to come in to clarify things."

"I don't trust you," I said bluntly. He paused then, either looking for the right word, or listening to his earpiece. Switching to internal comms, I asked Ghost, "Can you tap in to his communication?"

"I'll get on that, Guardian, but it seems to be Tinkertech communications," Ghost replied. "I'll keep you informed."

Finally, Velocity spoke.

"You can trust me," he said at last, stressing the word 'trust'. "You're not in trouble, and there are laws that protect parahumans during their trigger. Do you know what trigger events are?"

I nodded. Trigger events are the most traumatic event a person can experience. They need to feel like they have no options, trapped with no way out of their situation. So, they break, and somehow gain powers.

But Ghost and I had discussed this at length after I had called Ghost part of my power. It argued that it was an autonomous entity created by the Traveler to act in it's stead and a conduit that allowed me to channel the light. Other parahumans powers came from an unidentifiable source, but Ghost said mine came directly from the Traveler.

However, it couldn't refute me when I asked if I would still be able to use my powers should Ghost get killed. My powers would continue, but I would lose the ability to be revived, and store engrams, since Ghost itself handled that. We went back and forth for almost an hour, but neither of us could come to an agreement, eventually dropping the subject.

All the same, I wasn't going to say this to Velocity. He was trying to make a point and I wanted to see what it was.

He continued speaking, "There is a lot of leeway for people immediately following a trigger event. It's not unheard of for newly triggered parahumans to have psychotic breaks, forgetting who and where they are.

"So, when, not if you come in with me, you will be treated fairly. You may even be inducted into the Wards," he offered.

With a sigh, I looked down at the coarse shingled roof. I was already tired of running and hiding, truth be told, and having a team and resources would be very convenient. But I wasn't ready to trust just yet. My instincts were telling me to run, and build my own base and team. To find a way back to the Traveler because it needed my help.

It gave me everything I had, saved my life. The Traveler deserved my help.

But, if I went with Velocity, maybe they could help. They, the PRT and Protectorate might reunite me with my parents. I could be a hero. There were a lot of positives to going with Velocity, and very few negative points that I could see.

"I'll be honest with you," Velocity said suddenly, with a short, nervous laugh. "We weren't even sure you were a person."

"W-what?"

Velocity nodded. "Yeah, the way you acted on the police station security footage after you were reanimated? You looked almost… like a robot. All stiff and stuff," he said. "It's good to know that you're still, well, you."

I narrowed my eyes at him behind my own visor. I didn't like where he was going with this.

"Speaking of, where is that little robot that revived you? Is it part of your powers, or something?"

Should I tell a lie, or the truth?

"Tell them you don't know," Ghost advised me cautiously. "I have a bad feeling about what they'd do if they got me."

"What robot?" I asked.

"Come on," Velocity almost whined. "It was caught on camera."

I sighed. This could throw a wrench in the gears. But still, it looked like going with him might be my best option. It wouldn't be easy to escape him if I did run. The Protectorate was deliberately cagey with all their cape's powers, but what was known was that Velocity was a speedster, with some kind of Breaker effect. It was speculated that he could move at over three hundred miles per hour, and he did so by slowing time for himself so that it seemed time passed normally for him.

I was silent for a few moments more as I pondered the merits of going with him. I heard engines rumbling and tires screeching below and behind me and I realized that needed to make my decision soon. To be honest with myself, I was sixty, forty; against, and for. But I could only anticipate this getting worse the more I ran. I had proof, now, that the Protectorate was gunning for me, and I wasn't making any friends with the Empire. And just a few days ago, I had hurt Glory Girl.

I was about to take the offer...

Then, everything spiraled out of control.

As I took a breath to tell Velocity my answer, his right hand shot up to his ear piece.

"What? NO! No, stop!" he shouted.

I was confused, only for a moment. My reflexes took over, and I dodged to the right as I heard a high caliber rifle report. My shield depleted and I felt a burning pain in my left shoulder as a round tore through it, spraying Velocity with blood.

They shot me!

This had all been a set up! Lure me into a conversation just so they could shoot me in the back. And I thought I could trust the heroes, how naive of me. I dove off of the roof backward, my right arm outstretched and hurled a large orb of Solar energy at where I had been standing, even as my left shoulder began to knit itself together. I would have to repair the armor, which irritated me, but the shooters aim had been off and I managed to escape without needing Ghost to bring me back.

As I fell, the Solar grenade impacted the roof and ignited it in a conflagration, but Velocity was already gone. I had expected as much; his hero name almost literally meant 'speed', after all.

But, what I wasn't expecting was for him to be waiting for me at the bottom of the two story drop, pulling the pin on one of the canisters.

I didn't wait to see the effects, immediately looking up at the next house over and Blinking to the peak of the roof. Following that, I took two steps and launched myself up and forward, using my Light to keep myself aloft, and I glided over the top of the PRT troopers. They sprayed foam from their containment foam guns up at me, but I was moving too fast for them to reliably hit me with it. I Blinked forward and over the next row of houses redundantly as I headed back south, toward my hideout.

As I landed in the middle of the next street; Grove Ave if my memory served, I glanced at my motion tracker in the upper left corner of my HUD. Something about the way Velocity moved was causing it to error, each segment of the 'pie' lighting up in turn like a demented game of 'Simon', and I cursed.

Partly because of the malfunction, but mostly because Velocity had caught up with me again this time only stopping for a fraction of a second to drop another canister.

I Blinked straight up to avoid the explosion and my curiosity was sated when it detonated. It released a rapidly expanding blob of containment foam, tendrils of the goo flopping about to ensnare anyone that managed to avoid the initial burst.

Looking back down at the street, ahead of the blob of foam, I Blinked again with the intent of making it to street level, but I stopped halfway there, my fifty meter limit being reached. Instead, I let myself fall, breaking my fall at the last minute and rolling into a sprint.

"I don't think we can escape him, Guardian," Ghost told me, worriedly.

"I know, I know..." I hissed, my boots slapping against the asphalt. "I'm thinking, but I'm open to suggestions."

My Blink recharged before Ghost replied, helplessly saying, "I've got nothing...sorry. I can't scan him like I did Glory Girl, not while he's moving, at least."

I sighed. "No worries, I'll think of something."

Then, Velocity was in front of me again, and I veered to my right, Blinking to the rooftops again. I followed that by gliding to another roof and Blinking again, and depleting my Blink charge.

Once more, the Hero blurred to a stop and dropped a foam canister at my feet. But this time, because of the recharge delay, I couldn't just Blink away, and I dove to my right, propelling myself further with Light. I didn't get far enough though, and a glob of foam landed on my lower back just above my left butt cheek. By then though, my shoulder had healed, and I reflexively reached down to swat the offending lump of foam off, only to realize too late that that was a bad idea when my hand got stuck to my butt.

"Mother fffff-" I hissed, still running away. I was angry with myself. I knew what the foam did. It was famous after all. The go-to weapon for the PRT. They didn't hesitate to let the public, and the villains as a result, know what the foam was capable of. Sticky, stretchy, thermal and conductive resistant and quickly hardening into a solid yet gas permeable lump of concrete, it could easily trap anyone short of a high level Brute or maybe a lucky Breaker.

Of which I was neither.

My anger wasn't helped by Ghost's raucous laughter sounding in my helmet. I wanted to snap at it, but my attention was almost wholly focused on evading the pursuing Hero. And as if summoned, Velocity appeared to my left, another freaking grenade primed and dropped. But by then, my Blink had recharged and I teleported to my right, away from him.

Only to realize that in my hurried flight I had fallen right into Velocity's trap. He had lead me in a circle, right back to the waiting foam sprayers of the PRT troopers.

The moment I appeared, they hosed me down, covering me with the liquid foam which rapidly set and trapped me upright, my hand still stuck to my butt. However, the foam wasn't sound proof, and I could hear Velocity skid to a halt nearby, and address the gathered troopers.

"Did we get her?" he asked, breathlessly.

"Yes, sir," I heard someone reply.

There was a brief pause wherein I could hear the troops talk among themselves, but I couldn't quite make out what was being said. Velocity and that first trooper must have been close to the mound of foam which covered me. Then, Velocity said.

"Jesus Christ, that could have gone better. Can we get the fire department out here to take care of that house fire?" he asked. Another pause. "And what's the ETA on the transport, Miles?"

Miles, or someone I assumed was called that, answered Velocity's question. "Approximately five minutes, sir," he said.

Five minutes wasn't a lot of time. I began to struggle, the drying foam only giving slightly with my enhanced strength. Regardless of my earlier mindset, I wanted to talk to the PRT on my own terms, not be dragged in encased in a hardening lump of foam. My struggles only increased when I heard one of the troopers, a woman, say, "Armsmaster is on his way as well, ETA three minutes."

The last thing I wanted was to have to fight my way past the leader of the Protectorate in Brockton Bay. I was already angry at myself and embarrassed at having been lead into a trap and caught. But having yet another of my childhood heroes look at me, judging me…

There was a pressure building in my head. At first, I took it to be a headache, but I quickly dismissed that. Since I became a Guardian, thanks to the Light, I hadn't suffered from any real discomfort. Headaches, Ghost told me, were a thing of the past. Well, unless I hit my head hard enough. I was still susceptible to head injuries, at least until I regenerated the damage.

So I began to struggle again, the pressure building and building, until I just… let it go.

Solar Radiance flared around me. The force of the flame sent the hardening foam in all directions, even as it vaporized the foam that was touching me directly. I felt empowered, even more so than when I first discovered the Light, as Solar fire covered me, emanating from my body in an aura of energy.

Time felt like it was standing still, and as I turned my head to get my bearings, it looked like the troopers were moving in slow motion. I took a moment to assess the situation.

I could easily dart from person to person, disabling them so they couldn't follow me as I escaped. But, I felt that that was a waste of time. I easily escaped their pursuit the first time, and I could do so again. No, the real threat here was the hero, Velocity.

No matter how fast I ran, or how far I teleported, he could catch up with me and drop another stupid grenade. I did wonder why he didn't just hit me, but I figured that it probably had something to do with his Breaker state while he was super fast.

As I located him in the crowd of panicked soldiers, he blurred away. The difference this time was that I could actually perceive him move, if only just. He appeared to me as a streak of red moving almost too fast for the eye to follow. But that was better than before, where he did move too fast for me to see.

I tracked him as he ran to the right, around to the back of a black PRT van, and he began rifling through the contents. His belt was devoid of any of the foam canisters, so I presumed that he was going to restock, at super speed of course, and resume the chase.

This time though, I was going to lead him into a trap of my own.

Velocity seemed the smart kind. I needed to feed him some information that I could use to lure him where I wanted. Fortunately, though my powers were bullshit of their own, I did have a set parameter that I could use. My Blink.

A plan forming in my mind, I pointed both hands at the ground and unleashed hell. A torrent of Solar fire streamed from my palms, and the area turned to an inferno that the troopers rapidly retreated from.

With them taken care of, I glanced over at Velocity and teleported in the opposite direction.

Sure enough, Velocity stopped what he was doing and started the pursuit. I had Blinked the full distance and triggered the cool down, so I started sprinting, heedless of the fact that my feet were melting the asphalt of the street as I ran.

Velocity caught up just as my Blink recharged, which happened way faster now for some reason, and I Blinked forward.

Again, I used up the full distance and began to run, and again, Velocity caught up.

The pressure in my head was beginning to lessen, and I took this to mean that my altered state, this Radiance, was going to end soon. It seemed to enhance me far beyond my normal state, and I needed Velocity to take the bait I was feeding him before it ended.

One last time, I blinked forward the full fifty meters, and this time Velocity was right on my heels. I cheered internally. He had taken the bait!

Velocity moved in front of me and dropped a canister. I couldn't help but notice that his own timing was off. Either that or he hadn't expected my reaction times and perception to be that much better. But I had time to reach down, grab the canister and throw it in the direction that he ran off. It stood no chance of reaching him, and sure, it may have been a bit petulant, but it felt good.

Turning back south, I again ran a few hundred feet in the time it took my Blink to reset. I Blinked once more, but this time, I only went forward about twenty meters. Sure enough, Velocity poured on the speed in a hurry to catch up. But he didn't expect me to have traveled a much shorter distance than before, and he wasn't able to slow or stop as I spun around, left arm outstretched and clothes-lined him as he ran past.

What I didn't expect, however, was for him to go tumbling across the street, over the sidewalk and through a nearby house's broken picket fence nearly fifty feet away before coming to a painful looking stop against the aluminum siding of the house.

I stared at him as he lay upside down against the side of the house groaning weakly. Part of me was afraid that I may have killed the guy, but the rest of me didn't really care. They had started this confrontation after all, by shooting me in the back before I could turn myself in.

Lesson learned.

I was not spiteful at all. Not one bit.

Nope.

Still, I trotted over to him as the flames wreathing my body flickered out and faded. The pressure finally quit, signaling that my super state was over, but I made a mental note to ask Ghost what it knew about the effect.

When I arrived next to the downed hero, I couldn't help but wince. His suit was torn in various places, and the exposed skin was covered in abrasions and scrapes. His right arm was bent the wrong way at the elbow, and his left ankle was turned completely around. He groaned as if in response to my observation.

"Is he… is he going to be okay?" I asked Ghost.

Ghost gave the mental equivalent of a shrug.

"He's pretty beat up," Ghost said, almost indifferently. "I didn't expect him to tumble as far as he did, honestly. Probably had something to do with his Breaker state."

I hummed in response, starting to feel a tiny bit bad.

"I'm tapping us into their comm network," Ghost continued. "That way you can call in his location so someone can come get him."

"Thanks Ghost," I said.

"Go ahead."

I once again heard chatter over the radio frequency, mostly panic and anger over my latest feat. But it went silent when I chirped in.

"This is… uh, this…" I paused. I didn't have a name yet, and I didn't really want to make one up on the fly, since whatever I coined myself would probably stick with me… well forever. "Look, I just took Velocity out. He pretty broken, so I'd suggest getting to him pretty quick."

It sounded like all the PRT troopers started talking at once as Ghost cut the frequency.

"We should get moving, Guardian," Ghost cautioned.

I nodded, and headed back to the hideout.

oooOOOooo

I made it back to the hideout just as the sun started peaking over the horizon, the sky coloring with bright pinks and oranges. Wearily, I made my way inside, shedding my armor and not really noticing as Ghost dematerialized it into Engrams. I'd repair the shoulder later.

Left only in my black bodysuit, I dropped heavily into my office chair, the cool leather feeling wonderful through the thin material of the suit. I sighed, running a hand over the stubble on my head.

"That could have gone much, much better," I complained.

Ghost materialized in a shower of data over the desk, then materialized the duffel bag on the floor.

"Yes, but it could have gone worse too, Guardian," it countered. "We made it in and out, with booty to boot!"

I couldn't help but smile at the little drone's enthusiasm. It was true; our mission had been a success, despite the confrontation with the heroic forces. No one was hurt. Well, too badly at least. And we had made our escape.

Plus, I had discovered something new about my powers.

"Hey, Ghost?" I asked, hesitantly.

"Yes, Guardian?" Ghost replied, turning toward me from where it had been examining the duffel bag.

"Back there, after I got foamed, I noticed that I was feeling this… this pressure, like I was over full of the Light," I began. "Eventually, it built to the point that I felt like I was going to burst and then, well, I burst into flame. I'm not complaining, mind you, but… what was that?"

Ghost perked up, going into what I liked to call 'lecture mode'. I noticed that it seemed to like teaching me about the Light and my abilities, but it almost never initiated, only telling me things when I happened to ask. It was a bit irritating, I'll admit, but easily dismissed.

"All Guardians, when charged with the Light, are capable of devastating abilities," It began, while looking at me intently. "Even more than normal. Based on the type of energy you happen to be channeling at the time, this ability will differ from the others."

"So, since I'm only capable of Solar right now, I burst into flame?"

Ghost bobbed. "Yes, but that wasn't all," It chirped. "Your perception, reflexes, strength, speed, all that was enhanced by an order of magnitude. Plus, did you happen to notice any of the bullets?"

I cocked my head to the side in confusion, my eyes widening, "Bullets?"

They shot me?

"Yes, Guardian, bullets," Ghost said smugly. "When you exploded, they switched from foam to live ammunition. I'll take it from your reaction that you didn't notice any hits?"

I shook my head. I hadn't noticed it, so focused on how powerful I was feeling. It seemed though that they took the kid gloves off and moved from a capture objective to a destroy objective when the foam failed.

"Enhanced as you were, you were practically invulnerable to small arms fire."

That was useful information to have, and I hungered to know more.

"How did this happen?" I asked eagerly.

Ghost bobbed back and forth. "Much like myself, you charge ambient Light over time, though much more slowly than I do. However, you have the advantage of charging through combat. Much like a dynamo, the more action you take, and the more enemies you dispatch, the faster you charge up."

So I was like a battery? Or, like the hero, Battery? Powers were weird.

"What else can I do?" I questioned. "Like, when I'm utilizing Void, what then?"

Ghost did a backflip and chirped cheerily.

"I have no idea!"

My enthusiasm deflated like a balloon.

"Oh."

"Sorry, Guardian," Ghost said despondently, collecting itself, "I wish I did, but my databanks are woefully incomplete. If we were closer to the Traveler, then maybe I could learn more, but until we can get back, I know as much as you do."

I pursed my lips with disappointment. Still, it was good to know that I had the capability and versatility, and I supposed we'd find out when I learned how to use Void and Arc.

Either way, it was past time for me to look through the spoils of my mission. I had a stack of notebooks, clothes and a photo. But my heart sank when I dug into the duffel bag and found it full of shards of glass and splinters of wood. The glass pane on the photo had broken, the frame as well. I wondered how briefly before remembering the bag thumping against the window frame as I jumped from my bedroom window.

Quickly, I rummaged through the contents of the bag until I found the photo. It had ripped slightly, the tear going through my dads head, but the rest of the photo was untouched if a bit wrinkled. I placed it on the desk, smoothing the wrinkles and pushing on the torn section as if I could repair it that way.

Realizing that it was futile, I put the photo reverently to the side, and began pulling out the rest of the bags contents. Clothes went to one side, while the notebooks went in a pile on the edge of the desk. I took a moment to fold the clothing again, re-purposing the drawers in the desk as a bureau.

Then, I went through the notebooks. I had four of them. Two of the notebooks were dedicated to the bullying campaign that Sophia, Emma and her name was Madison apparently, had subjected me to. One of them was a personal journal, where I had written down feelings and events, and anything else that struck my fancy. There were even a few pages dedicated to poetry, but god was I bad at it.

The last notebook, the thinnest of the four, was where I kept ideas and rambling thoughts about capes. I had doodles of costumes and names for myself if I ever became a cape, and I even had a shoddy attempt at a fan fiction, in which a young girl got powers and started up a fiery romance with Legend.

I pointedly ignored that section, a blush covering my face.

But as I read, my memories started to return, though not too clearly. It was almost like a memory of a memory. Like remembering someone else's home movies. It felt like they had happened to someone else.

Still, they helped fill in the blanks in my mind, both good...and bad.

June 3rd, 2008

Mom died today, and it was all my fault. I can't even remember why I called her, only that she was on her way to work when I did. We talked then I heard crunching and screaming and then the phone call cut out.

Dad is closing himself off. I think he is taking this harder than I am, but I need him. Thankfully, I still have Emma. I'm going off to summer camp in a few weeks. Maybe that will help clear my head.

I closed the notebook, and set it back on top of the others. Nerveless fingers picked up the torn photo, and I stared into my mothers eyes. They were expressive, showing joy at being with her family, but… she was gone.

The photo slipped out of my grasp and fluttered to the floor, landing face down. On the back was a short note, penned from my mother to me.

Little Owl,

Remember that I love you, my daughter. And know that I always will.

Love, Mom

And my heart broke as I grieved again.

Thus ends the Daybreak arc, the first of hopefully many. Next up we have some interludes, then the next arc, Dawning, begins with a bang.

Last edited: Mar 22, 2017

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Threadmarks Daybreak Interlude.1 - Glory Girl New

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SniperFrog

SniperFrog

Right between the eyes.

Apr 9, 2017

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#419

Pain.

It dominated Glory Girl's mind in that moment. It had been so very long since she had felt any kind of pain, that she'd forgotten just how...painful it could be. But right now, her leg was in agony, the small hole in the front of her thigh misleading everything about how bad her current injury was.

Fortunately, she was going into shock.

"...ssssten to me," a firm voice said. Glory Girl was finding it very hard to concentrate just at the moment despite the grip that person had on her face. "You'll survive-ve-ve. The cops are on their way… way… way..."

The person holding her face said something else, but Glory Girl didn't hear it through the buzzing in her ears. She couldn't focus her vision, instead staring past the person in armor and into the distance so very, very far away.

Suddenly, the person shook her, hard. Glory Girl felt awareness come surging back, if just for a moment.

"Do you understand? Nod if you do."

Did she? What did she understand? Awareness began to fade again but...

She nodded.

The next thing Glory Girl knew she was lying on a soft bed, and someone was gently holding her hand. She could hear a soft beep-beep coming from her left that reminded her of an EKG device. As her senses slowly came back, she became aware that the room smelled of antiseptic.

She was in the hospit-

The fight!

She surged out of the bed, diodes unsticking from her. She hovered in the air, looking around wildly for her opponent, the armor clad, flame throwing girl.

"Victoria!" someone said sharply.

Glory Girl- no, Vicky turned around in the air and looked down to see her sister, Amy glowering up at her from the bed side. Amy was currently in costume, but her half mask and hood were lowered, a stormy expression on her face. Her mousy brown hair was even messier than usual and her freckled face was pale.

"Get down here," Amy demanded, pointing a finger sharply at the bed.

Vicky complied meekly. She had never seen her sister this angry at her. Vicky settled on top of the sheets, crossing her legs as she sat. She was uncomfortably aware that she was wearing a hospital gown, and in her wild flight from the bed, would have flashed everyone in the room, had there been anyone in there besides Amy.

"Sorry, Sis," Vicky muttered. "What happened? How'd I get here?"

Amy sighed.

"The PRT and police arrived at the scene of a 'cape fight'," Amy said, drawing the quotation marks in the air. She sounded tired, and Vicky realized that it was a shift night for her sister. A glance at the clock on the wall showed that it was nearing one in the morning, well past when Amy's shift would have ended.

Amy continued when she realized that she had Vicky's attention again.

"When they got there, it looked like something out of a war film. Cars on fire, craters in the asphalt… you lying there in a pool of blood," she said softly, and tersely.

Amy's tone of voice told Vicky that her sister was equal parts worried and frustrated. She couldn't really blame her. Even she recognized shock symptoms.

That villain had left her to die!

Vicky had half a mind to fly out of the hospital and go looking for a rematch. She would have to fight a lot more cautiously; the villain… Honestly she couldn't remember the villain's name ...whatever she was called had figured out Vicky's invulnerability really quick. Maybe keep at range and throw things this time?

A gentle hand on her knee brought her back to reality, and she focused on her sisters face. Amy looked terrified.

"Vicky," Amy said, pausing as she seemed to gather her next words. "You almost died."

"What?"

"You lost so much blood," Amy whispered. "They got you on a stretcher and into the ambulance, but they couldn't give you any transfusions because of your stupid invulnerability. If your leg hadn't been cauterized..."

"But I didn't die," Vicky said, a cocky smirk on her face that she didn't really feel.

Amy smacked the mattress with an open hand, making her jump, "Dammit, Vicky I keep telling you that one day you're gonna end up in over your head! Either hurt someone beyond my ability to fix or… or..."

Vicky was at a loss for words. Never had she seen her sister this worked up over anything. Even the accidents where Vicky as Glory Girl hurt someone. Sure, Amy got mad, but this was a different kind of anger that Vicky couldn't quite put her finger on. Amy suddenly stood up from her chair and turned away from the bed.

"Vicky, I can't… she can't get away with this. I'll..."

She trailed off, and Vicky waited with baited breath, but Amy just sighed explosively.

"I need to go let them know you're awake," she said, not meeting Vicky's eyes. "The PRT have questions for you."

"Amy..." Vicky started to say, reaching for her sister but Amy fled from the room.

Vicky watched her go, more confused than ever.

Five minutes later, Amy returned, this time followed by a PRT agent. He was a small man with a craggy face and hard eyes. His brown hair was cut short, but spiked up at the front. When he spoke, his voice was soft, but commanding.

"Welcome back, Miss Dallon," he said as he took the chair Amy had vacated. "My name is Agent Schulz. I hope you're feeling better."

Amy stood in the far corner by the entrance to the room. Her mask was back up, but her hood remained down. She crossed her arms and watched, her eyes inscrutable.

"Thanks," Vicky said uncertainly, glancing at her finger nails. "So… what am I still doing here?"

"I need to question you about your encounter tonight," Agent Schulz said succinctly.

Before Vicky could so much as open her mouth, Amy spoke up again.

"You should probably wait for mom, Vicky," she said. "She's on her way."

Vicky nodded in agreement. "I need to speak with my lawyer, first."

Agent Schulz sighed in annoyance, but nodded. "I understand," he said. "We'll wait then."

Ten minutes later, Vicky's mother, Carol Dallon arrived, entering the room and commanding attention. She swept past Amy in her corner and sat next to Vicky, pulling the blonde girl into a tight hug. Vicky's face was mashed into her mother's shoulder to the point that she couldn't speak.

"Mom," she mumbled. When the hug continued, she said, "Mom..." again.

Carol pulled away, but put one hand on each of Vicky's cheeks and inspected her, like she was looking for flaws in a diamond.

"You're alright?" Carol asked.

Vicky nodded.

"Panacea healed you?" Carol asked again.

Vicky nodded again.

"Good," Carol said, curtly.

Then, like a switch had been flipped, Carol went from doting mother, to hard lawyer.

"Mr. …?" she trailed off, waiting for Agent Schulz to supply his name, which he did. "Mr. Schulz, why is a representative of the PRT here to question my daughter? I believe this is a New Wave affair."

Agent Schulz nodded.

"Oh, I agree wholeheartedly, Mrs. Dallon," he said. "However, are you aware of the events that occurred on January eleventh?"

Carol nodded, and Vicky looked back and forth between Agent Schulz and her mother in confusion. "What? What happened?" she asked.

"The attack on the police station, dear," Carol answered. "Remember your sister was called in to heal those injured police officers."

"Oh, yeah."

"We have reason to believe that the individual, codename, Revenant, may have been involved in both tonight's incident and the attack on the police station," Agent Schulz continued.

Vicky may have been blonde, and pretty damn hot, if she thought so herself. But she was far from stupid. She picked up immediately on the phrasing that Agent Schulz used to describe the villain she had fought that night.

"So, this Revenant isn't a parahuman?" she asked, speaking slowly, disbelievingly.

Agent Schulz frowned. "I'm not at liberty to discuss that at this time, Miss Dallon," he said curtly. "So, once again, could you please answer some questions for me?"

She looked at her mother for confirmation. Carol, for her part was making hard eye contact with Agent Schulz. Then after a few tense seconds, she nodded.

Vicky told Agent Schulz everything she could remember about the fight with this 'Revenant'. The fight itself was clear as ever, but everything that happened after she got shot was a blur. Agent Schulz understood though; going into shock was never pleasant.

One thing Vicky wanted to know though, was what happened to the truck driver, so she asked.

"Revenant told me she was there to stop an E88 arms shipment from entering the city. She said that the driver of the truck was a Nazi," she asked. She paused, uncertain. "Was he?"

"Unfortunately, we weren't able to locate the driver of the truck, so I can't comment on that," Agent Schulz said, shaking his head ruefully. "However, in the trailer we did locate various small arms and exposives, so Revenant was more than likely telling the truth."

Vicky hung her head, suddenly ashamed of herself. "Oh...uh, my bad."

Carol sighed. "Will there be anything else, Agent?" she asked.

"No, thank you," he said with a small smile. He closed his notebook, then stood to leave. "Mrs. Dallon, Miss Dallon, Panacea."

Then he excused himself.

Vicky looked up to see her mother staring at her with a hard, disappointed expression. She knew then that she had fucked up, and fucked up big.

Then her hardened expression broke, like it always did.

Carol sighed again. "Come on, lets get you checked out and get home," she said, getting up from the bed. "It's a school night, so we will save the discussion about how long you're grounded for after school tomorrow."

"What? But, moooommmm..."

8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888

Apr 9, 2017

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#427

Why do I suspect that Vicky is going to have a Grimoire card that goes like this?

You are Victoria Dallon. Daughter of a heroic lineage. Crusader against evil. Sister by law to Amelia Dallon, your faithful and beloved restraint against your own warrior's nature.

You have been taken.

Release the aura of queendom. Remove the crown of knighthood. The virtuous worms seek only to count themselves as kin to Amy, your siblings, mentors, menders. Let the black wind caress your skin, free of the aegis. It does not seek to strike you. Only to know you better. You are safe now.

What evil do you march against, striking the sky with stiletto boots? What laws seek your enforcement in this place of truth? What daggers, held by outlaws and drinkers of your self-same chalice, is it you seek to turn?

Vows. Contracts. The oath of generations, written into genes, the motions of parents, the social fabric of your beloved city, however frayed. Do not raise your aura-these words are consolation, not condemnation for dereliction of ridiculous burdens.

It is not blades you fear. Your power is born of the sword-logic, as is this place-but this power is the hilt. You bear the wound. It was not just a sport to you-it was your moment, your freedom from that searing gaze. That expectation. And just in that one moment, you failed-a prisoner of fear whose sweating palms could not hold the key. And then-liberation! You were bestowed a gift, and you became stronger, faster, idealized.

It was not enough. It was never enough. Now you had new bars. New fears. You laughed it off-a knight's bravery is not measured in lack of fear, but a coward's truth is found in how she fears disapproval. Look at me, and know that I am untroubled by guilt, for I am just, said the masked face. Just people do not face the shame of a mother's narrowed eyes, the anger of those they could not protect as well as they should, the questioning voices of the punished.

And it was still not enough. You plugged your ears with pride, and hid your doubts far away. But doubt is good-it tells us when the sword logic must have new precepts, when it is better to learn before leaping into the fray. And doubtlessly, you charged on, to break your fist on the iron will of the light's immortal fools. You sank here, knowing your fears had finally conquered you. Your laughter was shown to be screams, too late for others to hear.

Your vows have strangled you, and your faith has led your and your people to ruin. Relief is long overdue.

There is a knife here. It is shaped like [free of binding].

You no longer need wax to leave angry words unheard. You will exist between the saccades of the cold gaze of others, unseen by their imperfect eyes. The joy you will feel when you enforce the law will be untainted by pride, by fear, by mercy. The justice you enforce will be finally true, the justice of nature. You shall become the sword-logic made flesh, your dominion one that sharpens the blade of the knights you marshal as it tears away the armor of illusion your enemies so desperately pray can stop you. And when you hear their prayers, you will scream, because they do not need to know you are laughing. They do not deserve to share your joy.

Take the knife. Remove all the useless weights. Take your new shape.

(Yes, I really wanted to write a Grimoire card for a Taken Worm character.)

My Homestuck role is Thane of Space of the Land of Insanity and Frogs.

The Malkavians would be proud.

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Leliel

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Threadmarks PRT Threat Ratings: Daybreak New

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SniperFrog

SniperFrog

Right between the eyes.

May 7, 2017

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#490

We're not dead! I swear!

Vacation was good, I visited my parents, have a notebook full of notes, and...

Came home with a puppy.

In the mean time, have a thing.

Taylor's PRT Threat Ratings as of the end of the Daybreak Arc.

Tentative designation: Revenant. Real name: Redacted

Brute- 4

Observed throwing a desk that weighs 500lbs. Can take hits from high level brutes (See file #11431-Glory Girl) and regain her bearing. She also possesses a high level of regeneration, able to regenerate a shoulder wound from a high caliber rifle in moments.

Blaster- 6

Can control and project solar 'fire' at ranges up to thirty meters. The maximum theorized temperature of this fire is 4500 degrees Fahrenheit; hot enough to melt asphalt. Furthermore, Revenant has impeccable control with firearms, with an accuracy of at least 95%.

Breaker- 6

On one occasion, Revenant was observed cloaking herself in solar fire, which increased her durability, reflexes, and perception by a magnitude of approximately three. The most prevalent threat this breaker state conveys is a perceived immunity to our containment foam, requiring other means of subdual. (See file #11435-Velocity)

Mover- 3

Revenant is capable of teleporting distances of up to fifty meters in any direction. It is unknown at this time if she requires line of sight. She can also hover for short distances, and sprint at speeds of up to 35mph.

Tinker- 6?

It is still unknown if Revenant has a tinker partner supplying her gear, or if she builds it herself. (See file: Necromancer)

Rules of engagement:

Attempt to open negotiations, and find out as much as possible about her. Revenant appears to be in full possession of her cognitive functions, and is no longer designated as a mastered thrall. She is powerful enough that it is imperative we recruit her, or if nothing else, confirm that she will remain a heroic cape. If negotiations break down, do not attempt to contain her, as she has been observed reacting violently. (See file #11435-Velocity)

That being said, I'm still writing, and I am almost done with the last interlude. But I will probably refrain posting the start of the next arc until the puppy is a bit older and I can write freely without having to worry about her eating things while I'm not watching. Also, I'd like to have a buffer written so I'm not scrambling to get content out.

Last edited: May 8, 2017

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Threadmarks Daybreak Interlude.2 - Danny New

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SniperFrog

SniperFrog

Right between the eyes.

Jun 2, 2017

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#513

Sorry this one took so long. I blame life.

The phone receiver slipped from Danny Hebert's slack, nerveless fingers. It clattered against the wall as it bounced at the end of the cord. But he could not hear it through the buzzing in his ears. He could think of nothing else but the message he had just received.

Taylor, his only child, was dead.

The only thing he had left of his late wife Annette, had been found dead at her school, stuffed into a locker filled with bio-hazardous waste. As his knees failed him and he slumped to the floor, hundreds of thoughts raced through his mind.

Why didn't I know?

How long had this been going on?

Who did it?

This is all my fault…

Why did it happen?

Nastier thoughts were mixed in as well, ranging from revenge, to simply ending it all.

Moments passed, and eventually Danny realized that the tinny, distant voice that was coming from the phone receiver was calling his name.

"Mr. Hebert? Mr. Hebert, are you still there? Answer me!"

Danny groped for the handle of the phone, eventually getting his hand to cooperate and bring the reviewer to his ear.

"...yeah, I'm here," he said, defeated.

"Mr. Hebert," the man on the other end continued. "I know this is going to be hard for you, but we still need you to come to the station and eye dee the body."

"...kay."

"We can send a car for you if you feel you can not drive safely," the man said.

Danny pondered it for a minute before eventually saying, "No, I can manage. How soon do you need me down there?"

"As soon as possible, Mr. Hebert," the man said.

"...kay."

"Again, I'm so sorry for your-"

But Danny didn't hear what the man was sorry for. He hung up the phone and went to receive his keys before wandering out to his beat up old pickup truck in a daze.

oooOOOooo

It was her, no doubt about it.

She was so pale. All her hair, long, curly and dark that so reminded him of Annette's had been shaven off so the coroner could examine her brain. But the rest of her features were unmistakeable. Her wide, expressive mouth was slightly open. Her half lidded, hazel eyes were dark and cloudy with death.

The coroner had pulled the sheet back so Danny could get a look at her. She was so thin. Taylor's hands were slack, but he could imagine them holding a book, Taylor on the couch, her legs folded up under her in a way that made Danny's knees ache just to think about.

Of course, he hadn't seen his daughter read a book for… well, a very long time. He hadn't seen much of her since she started high school. Instead, they barely spoke, and then only at meal times. Then she retreated to her room.

He wasn't stupid or unobservant. He knew about the bullying, but he couldn't bring himself to do anything about it, so soon after Annette's death. The pain was just too fresh for him, and he always told himself that Taylor's problems would go away, or that she would find a way to resolve them herself.

God, how had he been so blind?

Danny drank in his daughter's features one last time before nodding slightly to the coroner. The coroner pulled the sheet back up, covering Taylor's face again.

"I'm so sorry, Mr. Hebert," the coroner said, and he sounded sincere.

"What..." Danny started to say, but the words caught in his throat. He cleared his throat and swallowed dryly then tried again. "How did she…?"

"Cardiac arrest," the coroner said simply.

Danny glanced at the name tag on the man's white coat. It said, "Dr. Aaron Levine".

With another nod, the coroner lead Danny from the morgue, explaining what would happen next. Most of the man's words were nothing but buzzing in Danny's ears, but he caught the details. An officer would have him sign papers. They would tell him what they could about the case. Etcetera. Etcetera.

A minute later and Danny found himself sitting in an uncomfortable wooden chair at a large oak desk. The coroner left him there and explained that the detective in charge of the case, Bill O'Malley would be by in a moment. The desk was cluttered, and stained with far too many rings from coffee cups and a stale, half eaten doughnut rested on top of a napkin by the keyboard. The computer monitor had a screen saver on it, the BBPD logo bouncing from edge to edge and changing colors.

Danny watched it, secretly hoping that it would get stuck in a corner when a detective approached him. Danny got to his feet to at least shake the man's hand.

Detective Bill O'Malley was a larger man, standing just shy of six feet tall. His auburn hair was thinning, but his blue eyes were sharp, and full of sympathy for what Danny was going through. He introduced himself and shook Danny's hand with a firm grip, and Danny couldn't help but note that Bill had a very good handshake.

Very trustworthy.

"Please, Mr. Hebert, have a seat," Bill told him.

Danny did so, and Bill took his chair opposite from him.

Bill scooted up to his desk, and took a moment to throw away the old doughnut before typing in his password, banishing the screen saver away.

Danny was sad to see it go.

Bill cleared his throat and peered at his screen for a moment before swiveling to face Danny.

"Right," Bill began. "First, I'm so sorry this happened. You have my condolences."

Bill was only the third person to tell Danny that, but already he was tired of hearing it. He frowned at Bill and said, "Let's just get this over with, yeah?"

"Sure thing," Bill replied. "Now then, first I have some positive news for you."

Danny scoffed, disbelieving that anything positive could come of this. His only child was dead. He simply stared at Bill until the detective continued.

"We have suspects," Bill explained.

"Already?" Danny asked, perking up. "You know who did this to my little girl?"

"We had someone come forward and positively eye dee the one's responsible for shutting your daughter in her locker," Bill went on. "Rest assured, Mr. Hebert, they will be brought to justice."

"Who?"

"Excuse me?" Bill asked.

"Who are they?" Danny repeated, his voice flat and devoid of emotion.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Hebert, but I can't-"

Danny interrupted Bill, slamming his fist on the surface of the solid oak, ignoring the pain the action caused. "God dammit, I need to know who!"

The detective seemed taken back by Danny's outburst, physically leaning away from him. "Mr. Hebert-"

"Please…"

Bill's expression was pained, and he breathed heavily through his nose. Then, after a few seconds he said, "Alright… but no one can know that I told you, deal?"

"Deal," Danny replied, a small smile on his face.

Clicking furiously at his mouse, Bill began to browse files in his computer, muttering to himself as much as Danny. "I'm only doing this because I'm a father too," he said under his breath. He pointed with his free hand to a photo in a simple black frame on his desk.

In the photo, a younger Bill stood next to a heavy set woman with a kind face who was holding a young boy, perhaps three years old. "Your son?" Danny asked.

Bill nodded, a grin growing across his face as he typed something. A password perhaps. "Jacob," Bill said. "He's five now, but in that photo he was three."

Despite his mood, Danny smiled a little. But just as quick as that smile appeared, it vanished. It was well and good that Bill still had his child, but Danny's child, his only daughter was gone.

So, Danny merely grunted in response.

Bill eventually found what he was searching for. "I can't let you read these here, understand?" he asked.

Danny started to protest, but Bill spoke over his words in a harsh, hissed tone.

"I could get arrested for this, Mr. Hebert," he growled. "Do you have a computer?"

Danny nodded, then watched as Bill inserted a thumb drive into a port on the front of the computer, then clicked, dragged and clicked the mouse again.

After a few seconds, Bill nodded, pulled the thumb drive out and slid it over to Danny on top of a few sheets of paper. Further forms that Danny had to fill out and sign in triplicate, Danny thought. Mechanically, he signed his name on all the required lines, paying no attention to the minutia of the documents. Then, when he finished, he slid the stack back to the detective, but palmed the thumb drive, and put it in his pocket.

Bill reached across the desk, his hand outstretched for a handshake.

"Sorry I couldn't be of more help, Mr. Hebert," he said, a sorrowful expression on his face.

Danny took the man's hand and shook it firmly. But his mind was focused on home. On getting to his computer and browsing the files on the drive and finding out who killed his daughter.

oooOOOooo

His hands would not stop shaking. Danny stared at the computer screen unseeingly, his vision focused a thousand miles away.

His computer was only five years old, but that was still ancient by technology standards. Especially with some of the tinkertech models on the market these days. The old thing didn't want to read the thumb drive at first. The screen kept telling him about error after error, but he persevered. Heberts were nothing if not stubborn, and eventually, after searching online for answers, he managed to get the computer to read the drive.

He almost wished he hadn't.

The drive only contained a few documents; mostly witness statements and notes. But throughout the notes were three names. The names of his daughters killers.

The first two, Madison Clements, and Sophia Hess meant little to him. The third name, however…

He could feel his blood pressure rise and rise until he could hear his pulse in his ears. His vision blurred around the edges like it always did when his temper spiked, and he made and discarded plans for revenge, and confrontation at the speed of thought.

The Barnses didn't live too far away, and in his haze of anger, it wasn't long before Danny found himself on their front door step, his beat up old pickup truck parked carelessly on their lawn. He pounded on the door, shouting for Alan, the man who was supposed to be his friend to come and explain himself.

The door opened to reveal Alan Barnes. His eyes were sunken and red rimmed, and his clothing, which Danny had never seen less than immaculate was rumpled and looked like he hadn't changed in days. It did nothing to soothe Danny's temper, and all Alan manged to say was "Danny, I-"

Danny's right fist lashed out in a wicked hook, hitting Alan solidly on the jaw and slamming the other man into the door frame. Alan collapsed and began to quickly scoot backward on his rear, one hand held to his bleeding mouth.

"I didn't know, Danny!" Alan whimpered. "I swear, I didn't!"

Danny stalked forward, his arms tense at his sides and fists clenched, ready to hit Alan again.

"How could you not know!?" he seethed. His steps brought him to loom threateningly over the other man.

Alan stopped scooting back and brought his other hand up to defend his face. "I didn't- Emma's a teenager, Danny, you know what they're like!" he cried.

Danny pulled his arm back, ready to hit Alan again.

"Please, no!" Alan begged.

"Where is she!?" Danny shouted in response.

"I...I can't...," Alan trailed off.

"WHERE!?"

"She was arrested, along with her friend, Sophia!" Alan shrieked, his hands defending his face again. "I swear, that's all I know!"

Danny felt all the fight drain from him, like a deflating balloon. He sagged where he stood, and his arms drooped by his side. The knife he had brought with him, to do he did not know what with, felt heavy in his pocket.

But he believed Alan. "I'm...I'm sorry, Alan… I..." Danny muttered, trailing off.

Alan clambered to his feet. He pulled his hand from his mouth and looked at his blood covered palm before gingerly touching his split lip. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry too, Danny," he said at last. "I know it won't bring her back, but if you need anything, don't hesitate to ask."

Danny nodded numbly. "Yeah," he said softly, before turning around and heading back to his truck.

oooOOOooo

The rest of the week passed in a haze for Danny. He went to work and came home. He didn't eat much, if at all, but he drank. His evenings were spent in a drunken stupor, lamenting his lot in life. And not much else happened until that Friday, while at work.

Kurt, one of Danny's closest friends and a fellow dockworker was in Danny's office, doing his utmost best to cheer Danny up. He was failing badly at it too, and no matter what Kurt tried, Danny's mood remained in the dumps.

It only got worse with his next visitor.

Nate Wright was the head of the Dockworkers Union in Brockton Bay, and he acted like he was a high ranking executive. He walked into Danny's office like he owned the place. He was on the shorter side, with receding black hair and a square jaw and he wore a business suit a size too big for his small frame.

"Kurt, Danny," he greeted, looking back and forth between the two men. He frowned slightly when he looked at Danny, then he turned to Kurt. "Kurt, could you give Danny and me some privacy, please."

But, Kurt seemed to understand what Nate was there, and he stood up from his chair indignantly. "You can't fire Danny!" he shouted.

Nate flinched at Kurt's tone, and the fact that Kurt was easily a head and a half taller than him, but it wasn't enough to keep him from arguing back. "He isn't returning phone calls, Kurt," he shot back.

"The man is grieving!"

Nate sighed with resignation. "I understand grief, Kurt," he explained, his voice softer. "But all Danny has done is sit and mope at his desk. He's wasting everyone's time here, his own included."

"This is just an excuse to cut heads," Kurt hissed. "You know Danny is one of the highest paid union members and-"

"It's final, Kurt!" Nate said, interrupting Kurt's rant. "Or do you want to follow him?"

Kurt seemed to swell up, ready to do something violent, but his anger was defused by Danny's next words.

"Kurt, it's… it's fine." He said softly. "I'll go."

"Danny..."

"We'll mail your paycheck to you, Danny," Nate said. "I'm sorry it had to come to this."

Danny didn't look up, he just gathered his personal things, a photo of his family and a few odds and ends, and left the office. "Yeah… sure."

And he left the union offices with out further protest.

oooOOOooo

Danny spent the next three days sitting in his recliner. He barely moved except to refill his alcohol, or to relieve himself. So it was odd when he got up to answer the door. It was a bit of a shock too, when the door opened to reveal a man in a suit, flanked by two PRT troopers in full gear. The man in the suit looked Danny up and down before speaking.

"Danny Hebert?" he asked.

"Uh, yeah?" Danny responded. He squinted his eyes shut against the afternoon sun and tried to will the haze in his mind away.

"Hello, Mr. Hebert. My name is Devon Craft," the man introduced himself. "I'm with the PRT."

Danny peered past Devon and the two troopers with him and saw that the street was full of unmarked, armored, black vans disgorging other troops onto the street. Their radios crackled with orders, but they were too far away and too faint for Danny to make out. "What-" he started, before moistening his suddenly dry lips. "What's goin' on?"

"Well, to be blunt, Mr. Hebert, your daughters body was taken from the morgue."

Those words banished the drunkenness from Danny's mind, but unfortunately, it was replaced with unconsciousness as he fainted and collapsed to the floor.

oooOOOooo

The PRT troopers were making nuisances of themselves, Danny thought. After Devon Craft had revived Danny, they explained the situation to him in detail. The PRT was going to station numerous troopers throughout the neighborhood as a precautionary action. Just in case, they had said.

Fortunately, they weren't in the way enough to stop Danny from doing what he did most often those days; drinking and vegetating in front of the television. Except, once an hour, a trooper would come to the door to check on him. He had found out the hard way that they he couldn't ignore the trooper when they came. If he did, they would break down the door and storm in.

Just in case.

It was irritating, but he figured that with all the security in the neighborhood he could leave his door unlocked so they wouldn't break it down again.

They also gave him a pager, of sorts. A tinkertech device with a large, red, square button on the face, he was to press it should he need the PRT to come running.

Just in case.

But that night he was grateful for them. He heard a thump come from upstairs. In a house as old as his, it wasn't unheard of for the house to settle every now and then. Boards would creak, or thump, but everything would settle down.

So, he stared at the ceiling as he heard thumping again. It almost sounded like footsteps. Concentrating, Danny could almost make out the sound of dresser drawers opening and closing. And then a closet. Panic won out, and he grabbed for the pager on the end table next to his recliner, finding it buried beneath empty bottles and unopened mail. Secure in his hand, he frantically mashed the button, and mere seconds later, two armored troops stormed in the door.

"Mr. Hebert?" the first trooper asked. A woman based on the timbre of their voice. He could never tell; they all looked the same in their bulky chainmail and Kevlar body armor.

Danny pointed up, in the direction that he heard the noise. "Someone up stairs, I think," he explained.

"Stay here!" the female trooper ordered him, before she and her partner crept up the stairs to the second floor.

Of course Danny ignored her. He kept a baseball bat by the front door.

Just in case.

Grabbing the bat, he followed the two troopers up the stairs, and into Taylor's room. It had been ransacked earlier as the PRT and police looked for evidence, but Danny had done his best to put it back in order, fairly unsuccessfully. The two troopers stormed back past him, and down the stairs, hollering something about a necromancer and cordoning and calling in Protectorate support, but Danny didn't really hear that.

Instead, he focused on the room, and the open window. Someone had taken Taylor's things. Personal things, like the photo on her vanity. Her clothes. Her back pack that had her old school things in it.

Danny felt his world collapse around him.

DESTINATION

"...Taylor?"

AGREEMENT

This one was waaaaayyy harder to write than I anticipated. One more small interlude after this, one where canon goes way off the rails, and then we start on arc 2.

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Jun 3, 2017

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#582

Christian Cook thought Australia sucked.

It was hot, and arid out by Ayers Rock, but his adventurous girlfriend, Maria had insisted that they travel all the way here from New York. Despite his protests, and despite the astronomical cost of the plane tickets, he agreed.

Because, after all, she was damn good in bed.

He was planning on marrying her after all. Best to make her happy.

So here he stood, out in the dry, miserably hot Australian summer heat, slapping at flies that may as well be birds for the size of them, looking at a fucking big red rock.

There were tourists everywhere, he noticed. All snobby rich people, like his own parents. He couldn't understand the appeal of the place. Sure, their hotel resort was posh and upscale, but he could go to any resort he wanted. And yeah, it was an opportunity to visit another country. But… why Australia?

Suddenly, a ripple of commotion moved through the gathered crowd. Everyone was muttering and pointing at something in the distance. The gathered people started to travel in that direction, and Christian and his girlfriend were caught up in the crowd.

"What is it?" Christian asked his girlfriend.

"No idea," Maria replied.

But there, near the eastern side of Ayers Rock, by a crevasse in the stone that looked big enough to hold a bank vault door, was what looked like fog. It started small, but grew rapidly, until it was more of a ground level storm cloud than a fog bank. Purple lighting arced through it, though none of it ever grounded. And in the middle of the cloud there was a pinpoint of light that grew brighter, and brighter…

Christian, as well as most of the other tourists turned their eyes away. Then, they had to cover their ears as a thunderclap sounded.

Then, everything was quiet. No birds were calling, no bugs were buzzing. Hesitantly, Christian opened his eyes.

The storm cloud had dissipated, and in its place stood a massive crystal column. Easily twenty feet tall, and almost ten around at its base, silvery metal scroll work decorated it from base to top. The facets carved into it glinted brightly in the harsh sunlight.

Now, Christian wasn't stupid. This was a world that had capes. Capes were strange and dangerous, and anything that could not be explained easily was more than likely the work of a cape. A crystal pillar appearing in the middle of a storm cloud with no other explanation was almost definitely the work of a cape.

So, with a shaking hand, Christian grabbed his girlfriend's arm and started to drag her away from the spectacle, along with a good amount of the other people who were doing the same.

His girlfriend, to his horror was rooted to the spot. Not with fear, though. Oh, no, that would make sense. She was captivated.

"It's so beautiful," she breathed, clearly in awe.

"No, Maria," Christian hissed, angrily. "It's not. It's dangerous, now come on."

Maria jerked her arm out of his grip and glowered at him. "No," she snapped. Then, she started to head closer to the crystal column. "I want to get a closer look."

"Maria-" Christian started to say, but then he cut himself off with a sigh of resignation. When Maria made up her mind, she was stubborn as a bulldog. So, with growing trepidation, he followed her closer.

Up close, he could make out finer details. The column looked like it had a metal core. Centralized, about half way up was an inverted triangle that glowed with a faint silver light. Near the top, where crystalline spikes stood up like a crown was a glowing white orb.

Despite himself, Christian was entranced by the crystal. As he stared at it, he got lost in the detail, and he could swear he saw things. They were indistinct, yet clear. Close, yet far…

And he reached out to touch...something, he didn't know, the column moved.

It twisted in the middle, and the bottom of the column split into two legs as thick as tree trunks. The middle opened, and reformed into a clear torso with a narrow waist, and the sides spread from side to side, revealing two arms that rotated and set into place in what were now shoulders. The spikes on the top reformed into a head, and the yellow orb became its eye.

Now thirty feet tall, the crystalline titan stared over the crowd of onlookers impassively, like they were beneath it, more than physically. Then it began to glow.

People began to panic and run from it. Christian fell to the ground as he himself turned to run, and was trampled as the others ran over him. His own girlfriend forgot about him as she fled.

But it was for nothing. The glowing reached a peak, and a corona of light expanded from the crystal titan, and as it washed over him, Christian Cook ceased to be.

oooOOOooo

High in the stratosphere, a winged figure drifted above the continent of Australia. It's head turned minutely, looking down at the center of the continent.

Then, it continued on it's way.

Fuckin' FINALLY. I had another interlude planned, but I'm tired of this arc.

Last edited: Sep 20, 2019

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#660

No reasons, only excuses save the writer's block being very real. I think I've broken through it, so the updates should be more frequent, but I make no promises. Thanks again to WirelessGrapes.

It had been three weeks since my memories had returned, and my hideout was coming along well. It only took four days to finish the glimmer fabricator, since I threw myself feverishly into completing it.

It wasn't pretty, but it worked. Unfortunately, it was crudely built, far more so than I would have liked. That meant that it still could not build everything I wanted it to, and what I could make with it was made far slower than I would have liked.

Regardless, I finally had one, and the possibilities opened up before me.

Using the Glimmer that Ghost had collected, the extruder was able to print materials that I had never heard of, made out of rare materials, though the ratio of Glimmer to material was terrible. I knew that a better fabricator would allow me to make things faster and more efficiently, but then I would be limiting myself by not making other things.

So, I diversified. A part for the new fabricator, then something else. Repeat ad infinitum.

So far, I had made new X and Y axis carriages and a new extruder; perhaps the most important and complex parts of the fabricator. Everything else could easily be bought, since 3-D printers, while not common, were commercially available. Or, failing that, I could simply make them by hand.

But, perhaps the creations I was most proud of were the Light focuser and Light capacitor. These two little devices opened up a world of weapon and armor upgrades for me. According to Ghost, in the Last City where the Traveler called home, most technology was based on Light as a power source. The Traveler radiated it, and the Smiths created devices to harness and channel that energy. Prosperity spread and humanity entered what they called "The Golden Age".

Here though, only myself and Ghost generated the Light, limiting our options for Light-based machinery and weapons.

So, the focuser would collect any ambient Light that we gave off and store it in the capacitor. Once installed in a weapon or armor piece, they would allow me to do things like coat my bullets in Light energy, or increase the strength multiplier of my armor. I focused on efficiency when I made them, since Ghost and I didn't generate nearly as much light as the Traveler did.

I had already upgraded my favorite gun; the fifty caliber revolver I had taken from my first kill as a Guardian. The capacitor was mounted under the barrel against the trigger guard, and two wires made of crystallized gold, and jacketed with carbon nanofibers ran down the guard and into the handle, where I had installed the focuser. Holding the gun in my hand would leech Light and store it in the capacitor.

Unfortunately, while the focuser could channel whatever element I needed, the capacitors were made to store only one or the other. It was an annoying limitation that I couldn't seem to find a work around for. As such, I made the capacitor in the revolver a solar capacitor, since I had a certain fondness for it.

I glanced at the far wall which showed the results of my project. On the concrete, in white chalk, I had drawn silhouettes of various villains. The one that looked somewhat like Kaiser, if you squinted and tilted your head, was covered in three inch diameter scorched pits. There was a grouping of holes in center mass, right over his heart, and one in the center of his forehead.

Ghost said I had issues.

He was probably right, but he wasn't the one who had a gun that shot explosive bullets.

"Oh dear, oh dear. Dusty, dusty."

Looking at yet another of my creations, I was inclined to agree. Little more than a skeleton made out of tubing and actuators, the robot or 'frame' toddled around the shop and tried its best to keep things clean.

It had a basic crystal matrix memory core that was just enough to give it some commands and a rudimentary personality, and a tiny focuser and capacitor that were more than enough to power the thing. At the moment, it was holding a feather duster I had found in the janitorial closet and trying, ineffectually mind you, to clean the rust stains off the work benches.

The frame, which I had designated 'HK1' was my misguided attempt to bring life to my hideout. I had hurriedly cobbled together the frames body and set my glimmer fabricator to printing the memory core the moment I realized what I could make. My Frankenstien's monster of a phone programmed the core easily enough. But when the frame was powered up and it immediately set about cleaning and tutting about how messy the hideout was, I realized that it wouldn't solve the problem I had created it for.

I was lonely.

A month of isolation was driving me mad. Now, I did have Ghost to talk to, but once it and I came to the realization that Ghost was fundamentally me I realized that carrying a conversation with Ghost was tantamount to talking to myself.

I also couldn't go home. That option had been botched with my last and only visit when I got in a fight with the Protectorate hero, Velocity, and hospitalized him. Now, my dad's house was vacant, with a 'For Sale by Owner' sign staked in the front lawn, and I had no idea where Dad ended up.

With a sigh, I turned back to the fabricator and set about programming it to make the diamond lattice-work that would supply lift to another one of my creations, and something I was almost giddily excited to finish.

On the loading dock lay the finished chassis for my hover bike, or sparrow as Ghost called it. It was made out of welded aluminum to keep the weight down and was about eight feet long. Once I had the body panels welded on and the ailerons attached, the overall length would be closer to ten feet.

Unfortunately, I was limited on how fast the lattice-work could be made. I needed more diamond, and, unless I was willing to commit a heist, which I was not, I needed to rely on my glimmer fabricator to print it for me. And, like I mentioned before, it was woefully inefficient, especially with diamond.

Ghost could store a maximum of twenty five thousand glimmer units. A cubic centimeter of diamond, printed in my fabricator took all that, and more. It was slow going, and frustrating.

But, on the plus side, I had a great outlet for my frustrations with the Empire.

Ghost was definitely right about my issues.

A five square mile area around my hideout was devoid of any open gang presence, outside of the existing tags. My nightly patrols had successfully driven them away, although they figured out that I was using their own web server against them and shut that avenue down.

The people who worked in the area were not ungrateful either. Without the website, I needed a way to keep striking at the gang. Then, one night, about a week prior, I noticed a folded piece of paper stapled to a telephone pole on the edge of my claimed territory. The telephone pole was covered in old fliers, lost dog signs and the like, but what stood out about this piece of paper was that it was folded neatly.

It turned out to be a note, addressed to Revenant, which was apparently the name the PRT had given me. This note detailed a location of a gathering of gang members doing a drug deal. After I put them down and notified the police, I left a thank you note on the telephone pole.

Two days later there was another, and I had a replacement system.

It seemed that the Empire were trying to figure me out as well. While the gang members no longer loitered during the day in the area I had claimed, I did notice more and more patrols at night. When I chased them away, I made sure to strike from different directions each time, so as to not give away any information about the location of my hideout.

I was so focused on assembling the thrust control engine for my Sparrow, that I didn't notice HK start to dust my work bench until it knocked the lattice from my hands. My quick reflexes were the only thing that kept the delicate structure from shattering on the concrete, but still it cracked in half.

I rose back up furiously, one hand holding the broken lattice and the other wreathed in humming Void energy. The lens of the simple USB camera that composed HK's eye stared at me blankly, and I felt the anger in me simmering down. HK was a simple robot, merely programmed to clean. I put the cracked lattice on the work bench and told Ghost to reclaim it to glimmer. I would reprogram the fabricator to make another one later, but at the moment, I needed to meditate and clear my mind.

When Ghost had suggested that I "meditate to find my center" or "clear my mind" or some malarkey like that, I had no idea it would lead me to discovering the Void. The Void isn't what it sounds like. Void conjures up images of nothingness, like space, or the yawing gulf of a chasm.

But what the Void really is, is the space between realities.

Turns out that there is a lot of space between realities, and its effects on our reality is really volatile.

Void energy was remarkably different from Solar. Where as Solar burned, the Void consumed. Solar felt warm, as life giving as it was destructive, whereas Void felt cold, lifeless. Solar was bolstering and protective at times. The Void only destroyed. It would dissolve matter, and convert it to energy and empower me. They were as different as fire and ice, though even that comparison fell flat.

Counting backward from ten got my temper back under control and I let the Void dissipate with a sigh. I shooed HK away to go clean something else and generally be away from my delicate assemblies, and made my way up to the office.

It, too had changed in the past couple of weeks. It was more homey, for one. The desk chair was still the staple of my furnishings, but I had gotten a couch as well and a twin sized bed for when I felt like sleeping. The old computer, long since having been scavenged for electronic scrap, was gone and in its place was the photo I had taken from home.

I picked the photo up and stared at it for a long while. Melancholy welled up in me, and I found myself missing my family. Eventually, Ghost hovered over to me and looked over my shoulder at the photo, then back at me.

"Guardian?" It asked. "Are you alright?"

With a sigh, I put the photo down.

"I need to go shoot something."

oooOOOooo

The note led me and Ghost to an alley between a supermarket and a warehouse on the western edge of my territory. We were close to downtown here, and the sounds of civilization even this late at night were much louder. I could hear car horns, engines, and even voices coming from the buildings further west. But, this area was fairly deserted with only a few vagrants loitering about, and one lady who was in a hurry to get somewhere.

Signed only with 'Jerry', the details of the note told me about fresh gang tags they spotted in this area. Sure enough, the brickwork was covered with various Empire tags in red and black paint. The dumpster had a crudely drawn swastika that I was certain was pointing the wrong direction.

I frowned beneath my helmet. A small orb of Solar energy formed at the tip of my right index finger and I began to roll it across my knuckles as I thought. Something about this situation caused the hairs on the back of my neck to rise.

From the entrance of the alley, I surveyed to space from side to side. Nothing else stood out to me, but I couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. I caught the Solar orb and clenched it in my fist, extinguishing it, and summoned my fifty cal into my hand. Holding it ready, I cautiously crept forward, muscles tense like coiled springs.

Slowly moving forward, I swept my gaze and my gun back and forth. I scanned the roof tops of the adjacent buildings and eventually made it to where the alley emptied on the next street over.

Nothing.

I blew a frustrated sigh through my nostrils, irritated that I had not found anything. I was so certain that I would find something here other than fresh gang tags. Then, I turned around to go back the way I came and froze.

A man was slumped in the corner where the dumpster met the supermarket's red brick wall. His shaved head was forward, chin resting against his chest, and a can of red spray paint in his slack grip. But what grabbed my attention was the blackened hole in his chest, big enough for a softball to fit through. All the way through, where I could see the green paint of the dumpster, splattered with his blood.

I holstered my gun and went to investigate, lifting the man's chin so I could get a better look at the wound on the body. Thankfully, the air filters in my armor kept most of the smell out, but I could still make out a vague scent of burned pork, and I had to focus on not throwing up in my helmet.

The hole tunneled all the way through the mans chest cavity, cauterizing the edges of the entry and exit wounds and spraying the side of the dumpster with viscera. I could not imagine the man lived for very long afterward, if at all.

"Ghost?" I queried.

Ghost materialized over my right shoulder and began to run it's data streams up and down the corpse. After a few seconds, it said, "I think he's dead, Guardian."

I sighed with exasperation. "You think?"

"Sorry..." Ghost muttered, as it floated higher to get a different angle for it's scan.

"What killed him?" I continued.

Ghost scanned for a few moments more, then the data stream abruptly cut out. "Based on the searing of the wound, and the size of the opening, I'd have to say a high energy beam weapon. Likely explosive as well," it answered. "As to where the energy came from…?" Ghost bobbed back and forth, it's version of a shrug. "It's almost impossible to say, given the variety of Tinker technology available. Could have even been a parahuman, what with their range of powers."

I ran through which parahumans were in Brockton and capable of doing something like this. A few members of New Wave for sure, but that was a remote possibility since they were heroes. Coil's mercenaries were rumored to use tinkertech lasers on their weaponry, but I had a hard time believing that they were powerful enough to put a fist sized hole in a man. Then there was Purity of the Empire. She fit the crime better than anyone else I could think of outside of a few villains that had never been spotted in Brockton Bay.

The only problem with that theory was that there was no reason Purity would straight out murder one of the Empire's own. And to further disprove the theory were the rumors that Purity hadn't been spotted it the company of the Empire 88 for months. Hell, she hadn't been spotted for months, period.

I rose to my feet and dismissed my gun.

"Call it in," I told Ghost. "Then we'll head back."

It took Ghost only a few moments to send the call out, but a lot can happen in a few moments. Our call fuzzed with static and cut out. At the same time, the alley filled with smoke that emitted from a point of light about six feet from the ground. Electricity arced from the point to leave scorch marks on the brick walls and the asphalt of the alley way.

As abruptly as the smoke appeared, it vanished leaving a metallic humanoid figure standing in the sudden darkness. It had a triangular head with a single red lens on on its face. It's body and limbs were spindly, reminding me of a human skeleton, and it had a tank of white liquid in the middle of it's chest. The lens lit up, it's head swiveled in my direction and it leveled a gun of some sort, crackling with red energy in my direction.

I dove behind the dumpster as Ghost shrieked, "Kill it!" over and over again. Slag sprayed past me as a bolt of red energy hit the corner of the dumpster. The dumpster shrieked across the asphalt as the impact pushed it toward me, and I rolled out from my cover. My hand cannon rematerialized in my hand and I brought it up in a two hand grip, and lined up the sights.

The noise echoed off the walls as I squeezed off four rounds. My first shot was right on the mark, and the robot's head whipped back as its red lens shattered. The next two bullets hit it in the shoulders and sent it clattering to the asphalt, and my fourth shot missed completely.

"The chest!," Ghost shouted. "Shoot it in the chest!"

The robot rose to its feet, the movement as it did so unnatural that I could feel goose bumps raise on my skin. Sighting again once I had a clear shot, I put the last two bullets in the cylinder into the white container of the robots chest. I felt relief as the robot sparked and collapsed in a pile of ungainly limbs.

Ghost rematerialized behind my head, cowering behind my helmet. "Is...is it dead?" it whispered.

The robot sparked in response, and its limbs twitched. Ghost let out an 'eep' noise and hid behind my helmet fully.

Cautiously, I approached the downed robot. I prodded it with my foot, and disturbed it enough that the arm holding the gun flopped out. Glancing back at the dead gang member, I could see now where the wound in his chest came from. He must have run afoul of this robot and gotten shot for his troubles.

"What on Earth is it?" I breathed.

Ghost peered out from behind my helmet again, emerging fully when it realized that the robot wouldn't move again.

"Not Earth," it corrected me. "Venus."

"What is it though?" I asked. "It died easy enough, but I've never seen anything like it."

"Because you've never been to Venus, which is where they're from," Ghost said. It began to float back and forth, bobbing up and down as it went. "I didn't think they would come here though. I didn't think they could."

"Ghost," I said, trying to get its attention, but the little drone continued to pace back and forth, ignoring me.

"I mean, they've never been encountered off of Venus, as far as I know," Ghost said. It paused long enough to turn and face me. "And worst of all, I think it's our fault."

"Stop, Ghost," I said, trying to grab the little drone as it resumed pacing. I missed however, and Ghost went on.

"Well, not your fault, you were dead at the time. Or maybe not, I mean, I don't know how time streams work when dealing with multiple realities and different worlds and all that," muttered Ghost. "But I can not for the life of me figure why it followed me. I mean-"

Finally, I managed to reach out and snag Ghost out of the air. I held it up and turned it to face me. "Ghost, explain."

Once I was sure I had its attention, I let go of Ghost and it resumed floating. It looked at me and its occulus blinked once.

"Sorry, Guardian," it said sheepishly. It floated over to the broken robot and began to scan it, bobbing around as it did so. After a few moments, Ghost began to explain.

"This is a Vex," it said. "The Vex are a race of robots that researchers think originated on Venus. Or Mercury, they're not too sure."

I squatted down near the wreckage and tentatively reached out to touch it, only to have Ghost ram itself bodily into my hand and force it away.

"Don't touch it!" Ghost hollered.

"What, why?"

"Remember what I told you about my journey here?" Ghost answered me with a question of its own.

Thinking back, I remembered Ghost tale of traveling through the solar system looking for its Guardian. How it traveled across Earth and Mars, eventually arriving on Venus. I remembered it telling me about the chrono-anomaly that brought it not only back to Earth, but back in time and across realities.

I nodded at Ghost.

"While I was on Venus," Ghost explained, "I scanned and recorded as much as I could. The Guardian I was following didn't exactly have time to stop and let me investigate. But, what I could gather does not exactly inspire hope."

Ghost hovered over the body of the Vex and did a few more scans. I watched with trepidation, fearing for its explanation.

"The Vex exist across all time and space, at least in the reality that I come from. They expand like a plague, and work tirelessly to convert the planets they're on into massive, world-spanning supercomputers. They're like a hive mind, of sorts. Each individual robot isn't so much on it's own, but they act as one entity. The Vex seek to wipe out any and all imperfection in the universe, and it's speculated that their ultimate goal is to use their time manipulating abilities to rewrite the very fabric of reality so that they have always existed and will always exist."

My breath caught in my throat and my heart hammered against my ribcage.

"So," I croaked. "You're saying this is a bad thing..."

"This is a very bad thing," Ghost confirmed.

I remained crouched, not trusting my legs to keep me upright. I knew that I was destined for greater things than taking down thugs, but I didn't think they would would happen so soon. It would have been easier to accept that the Vex were a rogue Tinkers creation rather than a reality ending threat.

"I don't know why they'd follow me here," Ghost whispered. "I'm just one Ghost."

Standing up, I felt my resolve harden. "That doesn't matter now, Ghost," I said. "What does, is how we're going to handle this."

Ghost bobbed in a nod. "You're… you're right," it said. "First, we need to let people know. Heroes, villains, it doesn't matter. The Vex don't have the concept of good or evil. They will kill anyone and everyone they come across."

Something about that statement didn't make sense. If the Vex were all encompassing, then why had they not swept across the face of the planet yet? Ghost's explanation made me think that the only thing holding them at bay was the Light, and the Traveler. But if Ghost and I were the only sources of light here in this reality, then why hadn't the Vex taken over already? I asked.

"I don't think there are very many here yet," Answered Ghost. "And those that are here are cut off from the rest of the Vex collective."

"So what happens if they're cut off?"

Ghost bobbed back and forth in a shrug. "No clue."

I groaned. That was less than helpful.

"However," Ghost continued. "One of the documents I was able to download talked about a destroyed Vex that some researchers powered up. It proceeded to start creating artificial realities within its processors and the computers that it was hooked up to. It got to the point that the researchers couldn't discern which reality was the real one."

That was also not very helpful. And terrifying.

"Chances are, however, that the Vex will continue trying to accomplish their end goal," Ghost finished.

"Then we need to go to the Protectorate," I said firmly. "They would be our best bet to get the word out."

"They tried to kill you, Guardian," Ghost said incredulously.

"You think I don't know that?" I shot back. "But I have to believe that they are good at their core. And if they try something..."

I spun my revolver on my finger and moved it to my side as if holstering it like a cowboy.

Ghost helpfully dematerialized it.

Dammit, I was going for something cool there.

"We can deal with that if it happens."

Thus begins arc 2, Dawn.

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Right between the eyes.

Jul 20, 2017

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#721

Thanks again, Mr. Grapes for looking this over for me.

It's funny, I thought. Everyone knows about 911. It's the emergency number, that would immediately connect the caller with a dispatcher that will notify the proper emergency service, be it the police, the fire department, or a hospital. However calling 911 and even mentioning the words 'cape' or 'parahuman' would have the dispatcher transfer you to the local PRT branch. In my case, PRT East North-East.

In the mid to late ninetys, the Parahuman Response Team created their own number for cape related emergencies since when parahumans were involved, response times needed to be better than with mundane emergency services. This number was easier to remember and quicker to dial than 911. All you had to do was mash the one button three times. It struck me as a bit arrogant.

Before I died and got powers I never had to dial either number. My dad made sure I knew them both though, just in case.

Now, I was dreading just how simple it was to make the call, and just how hard I was finding it to be.

I felt I had good reason though. My first and only dealing with the Protectorate and PRT saw me shot in the back and ended with me critically injuring a well known and loved hero. So I didn't know exactly how they would receive me.

Part of me wanted to send an email or something, but I knew that giving the information in person to one of their representatives would have it be taken more seriously.

I hoped.

Steeling my nerves, I dialed the number on my phone and had Ghost connect it to my helmet's com system.

There was no ringing. The line picked up immediately, and a woman began to speak.

"PRT emergency hotline, what is the nature of your crisis?" she asked.

My mind blanked.

"This is, uh..."

Son of a bitch! The only name they would know me by was Revenant, and I really didn't want to go by that. A revenant was a corpse that had come back from the dead to haunt the living. Which, admittedly made sense when it came to me, but regardless I didn't want to be called that.

"Ma'am?"

"This is Revenant," I said with a grimace. "I need to speak with… with someone.".

Real smooth, Taylor, real smooth.

"I mean, I have information that I need to share with them. Uh, the Protectorate, I mean," I finished lamely.

"Okay, Revenant, I need you to stay on the line," the woman told me. "What can you tell me about the information you have?"

Ghost giggled in my ear.

"They're trying to trace this call," it said. "Good luck."

I couldn't help but sigh.

"I can't say over the phone, and I wouldn't recommend trying to trace my phone. It won't work. Might even crash your system." I said, perhaps a bit vindictively. "Tell whoever to meet me behind the Kroger supermarket on Fifth Avenue and Ward Road."

"What-?"

I disconnected the call, cutting off whatever the woman was about to say. Now, all I had to do was wait.

It was not long before I heard the rumble of an engine. This late at night, it was a bit odd to hear vehicles in this part of town, so I could be reasonably certain that it was the PRT. I teleported up to the rooftop of the supermarket to get a better vantage point and have an advantage should things go sour.

Coming down the street was a van. I recognized it as one of the PRT vehicles that they used to deploy troopers from. The last time I saw one was when I went home to gather some things from my house. They didn't come around this part of town often, either because of me, or because my little island of territory was smack dab in the middle of Empire territory, I couldn't tell which.

Regardless, I recognized the vehicle. It was painted black with blacked out windows. It sat low, either because of it's suspension, or because the weight of the armored panels that gave it it's bulk. The van reminded me so much of a vehicle version of one of the armored troopers. The tires chirped against the curb of the sidewalk as it entered the parking lot of the supermarket.

I watched as the van passed the lane between the two buildings, then stop and reverse into the alley way. The back doors swung open and two troopers spilled out, containment foam throwers up and ready and sweeping back and forth.

"Clear!" the one on the left said. "Wait, I see some unidentified possible tinkertech."

"I have a body here," the right one said, as he spotted the dead gang member. He moved forward while the first one hosed the Vex wreckage until it was buried under a mound of foam. It was probably the best way to deal with it for the moment.

The trooper that went to the body, I decided to call him Bob since I didn't know his name, and the other Steve. Bob crouched over the body and moved it by it's shoulder, and the body slumped further down against the brick wall. Then, he said something into the radio receiver mounted on his wrist that I missed since we weren't monitoring comms.

"Tinkertech contained," Steve called back to the van.

Bob took a photo of the body with a small camera he took from a pouch at his belt then took up a position next to Steve, both of them holding their foam sprayers at the ready.

"We're clear now, ma'am," Bob said.

Miss Militia stepped out of the back of the van.

She was a tall woman, a few inches more than myself, with olive skin and dark hair. The fatigues she wore were in a shades of gray geometric pattern, digital I thought. Her hazel eyes peered out sharply above the American flag patterned scarf she wore across her lower face, and the sash at her waist matched. As I watched, the assault rifle she held flickered and transformed into black and green energy and swirled about her for a moment before reforming into a bowie knife that she placed in a sheathe that was strapped to her thigh.

Had this happened even two months ago, I would have died at the prospect of meeting one of my childhood heroes again, before I, you know, literally died. But right now I was just anxious that this meeting would go sour really fast. The last thing I wanted to do was fight another hero; this one in particular.

"Revenant?" Miss Militia called. She looked up at me just as I stepped off the edge of the building.

I flared my light moments before I would have landed on the asphalt and touched down light as a feather, letting my knees bend slightly to absorb what little impact there was. As I stood from my landing, I saw Miss Militia wave frantically at Bob and Steve to stand down, both of whom had brought their foam sprayers up to ready. Miss Militia's power had itself reformed into a small caliber handgun that she had in her right hand.

They were afraid of me? I thought, smiling to myself. Sure, their skittishness could be dangerous, but the thought that they were as afraid as I was filled me with amusement for some reason.

"Thank you for coming, Miss Militia," I said finally. "I was afraid that your organization wouldn't take me seriously."

I was standing about ten feet away from the hero and troopers. Miss Militia took two cautious steps forward, putting the pistol away in a holster on her right side. I noticed that the knife sheathe was missing. Did her power also form ways to carry an individual weapon? That seemed handy.

"We almost didn't," the hero said. "While we take you very seriously as a villain, your message was cryptic and we almost dismissed it as a prank."

Inwardly I sputtered, indignant. Villain!? I was trying to be a hero, goddammit, taking territory from the gangland my hideout was entrenched in, and putting down thugs. But, I couldn't voice this. If the PRT already saw me as a villain any outward anger on my part would only help any diplomacy in this meeting decline, and that was the last thing I wanted.

So instead, I said, only a little vindictiveness slipping into my voice, "I'm glad you didn't. This is pretty serious."

"Care to explain?" Miss Militia asked gesturing first at the pile of containment foam, robot limbs sticking out haphazardly, then at the slumped corpse.

"First off," I started to say, one finger raised. I pointed at the corpse. "That wasn't me."

I couldn't see Bob or Steve's expressions, but Miss Militia raised one eyebrow skeptically.

"I swear!" I exclaimed. My voice was perhaps higher than I wanted. "It was that things fault."

"And what is 'that thing'?"

"It's called a 'Vex'," I explained. "And, it's not tinkertech. And, it's a good thing none of you touched it."

"I think you should elaborate," Miss Militia slowly.

So I told her everything Ghost knew about the Vex. I explained where they were from, the theory about what they were, and a very vague reason about why there were here. The explanation took a few minutes, and by the time I was done, Miss Militia once again looked skeptical.

"I know it sounds far-fetched, but it's the truth, I swear," I pleaded.

"And just how," She replied. "Do you know this?"

I paused and sighed heavily. Here was the kicker. I could explain just where my powers come from, but that would also reveal that the Vexes appearance was technically my fault. Also, there was the fact that my explanation might only add to the heroes skepticism. At first, it was hard for me to believe Ghost's tale and I was the one with the powers.

At the same time, there was a Protectorate hero in Chicago, I think who called his powers magic. And, for all anyone knew, he could be right. No one knew where powers came from, and there were entire fields of study dedicated to delving into the secrets behind parahuman origins. There might not even be a single origin. My powers, for instance came from the Traveler, an extra-dimensional entity that went from star system to star system, granting any civilization it found powers and prosperity.

What were the odds that all powers came from an origin like that?

Eventually, I sighed.

"I...I can't tell you that," I said softly. "I just need you to trust me."

I could tell that Miss Militia was frowning by the way her brow wrinkled. She didn't quite like my answer, and it showed. "Can't?" she asked. "Or won't."

"Both," I answered immediately. "I just need you to-"

I winced, realizing what I was about to say was a massive hypocrisy.

"I need you to trust me on this."

Sure enough, Miss Militia laughed once, humorlessly.

"Of course," she said cynically. "But trust is a two-way street, Revenant. You can't ask for trust without giving it in return."

"Please." I found myself pleading. "I just can't. Not right now. I just need you to dispose of this," I gestured to the foamed robot, "and take my information with you."

Miss Militia sighed, and shook her head slightly. "Okay, I'll trust you this once, and only this once. But could I ask you to answer a few questions for me in return?"

I hesitated. "Ghost?" I asked over internal comms.

"No communication outside of normal sit-reps from the driver of the van," Ghost told me. "And I didn't hear anything that sounded like code, as far as I can tell. I think we're safe for a few minutes."

So, I nodded to the hero. "Sure," I said at last. "A few."

Miss Militia's first question stunned me. Of everything she could have asked, it was the least expected.

"We know who you really are, Taylor," she said. "You are still Taylor, am I right?"

How was I supposed to answer that? My internal conflict between my old self, and the Guardian I had become was far more muted than it was at first, but the fight still raged. I still found myself shooting to kill, and striving to obliterate my targets, at the same time I held back.

"I'm all that's left of Taylor Hebert," I said eventually.

Miss Militia nodded sadly, then gave Bob and Steve orders to pick up and store the Vex wreckage. Steve got a tinkertech looking chest from the back of the van, while Bob got, of all things, a snow shovel. Then Bob scooped the Vex, foam and all into the chest and sealed it, placing it back in the van.

She asked me a few more questions, most of them trying to get information about myself or where my hideout was, and I deflected them as best as I could. Eventually, she ran out of questions, or patience and put a hand to her ear where I could see something that looked like a blue-tooth headset.

"Roger that, we're wrapping up," she said. She looked at me. "No, returning alone. We have some tinkertech that will need containment and disposal."

Part of me wanted to correct her, but I knew that if she herself didn't quite buy my explanation, I doubted that the rest of the PRT would either. I just hoped that they were smart enough to do was I said, and destroy the Vexes remains instead of some shortsighted tinker trying to research them.

At last, Miss Militia's trooper guards climbed back into the van, and she started to follow them, but hesitated.

"One last thing," she said to me. One of her feet was on the floor of the van, and her hand was supporting her from a handle inside. "On behalf of the PRT, we apologize for our last meeting."

I leaned back in shock. The apology sounded like script, but from Miss Militia it seemed sincere. "Oh?"

"The trooper who shot you was acting off orders and has summarily been disciplined," she went on. "We hope that we can work together in the future."

Finally, she climbed in the back of the van and shut the doors. Then they rumbled off, leaving me standing alone in the alley way with a lot to think about.

Well, alone except for the corpse…

oooOOOooo

As I traveled across the rooftops back to my hideout, I thought back to my encounter with Miss Militia. She had approached me cautiously, but not aggressively. Now, I had a good idea about how they felt about me.

Uncertain. Scared. And I couldn't blame them, not really. I was an unknown, and I had already assaulted one hero. And, fairly powerful amongst capes. There were very few capes that continued to develop powers as they went along and those that did were almost universally fairly weak. Dauntless was the only cape that came to mind that didn't follow this trend. He could empower various items, bit by bit over time and each item would get more powerful and have differing effects. There were rumors that if he didn't retire, or die that he would end up at the level of Alexandria, or Legend.

Was that how they saw me? A cape that had seemingly unlimited potential, unshackled and unguided?

And I wasn't even done. I was still discovering uses for my powers. Solar was my most familiar. It was what I had awoken with, all those weeks ago on the examining table. It felt warm, comfortable, like an old friend, or a faithful pet. There for me when I needed it and it wouldn't let me down.

I had just discovered the Void, and there was so much that I didn't know about it.

Ghost said there was still one more energy I had yet to harness; Arc. Arc was supposedly similar to electricity, like Solar was similar to fire and Void… well Void wasn't like anything I could think of comparing it to. And I hadn't the first clue how to touch Arc. Ghost, unhelpfully didn't either.

I landed on the rooftop of a manufacturing facility about a mile from my hideout. I wasn't sure, but I thought they made cardboard boxes here. My message post was on a nearby street corner to the north west. Leaning against a large air conditioning unit, I removed my helmet and took a deep breath of the cold night air. It was almost spring, but this close to the ocean, the smell of salt and fish always overpowered any other smell, expect pollution.

"Thoughts, Ghost?" I asked after a moment.

I held my hand out, palm up and Ghost materialized above it looking at me.

"They don't believe us," Ghost said immediately. "But, they want to recruit you, so they're remaining open minded about what you told them."

I nodded in agreement, Ghost echoing my thoughts from moments ago. "Why didn't they ask, then?" I wondered out loud.

"They're afraid of you," Ghost cautioned. "You're not exactly the most stable individual, and you have a body count. Like, a more deadly Shadow Stalker."

"I am not!" I immediately protested.

"You have fifteen confirmed kills, Guardian," Ghost pointed out, its tone flat.

Shadow Stalker was edgy, more so before she joined the Wards. She wore urban camouflage and wielded two small crossbows, and she was famous for her brutal take downs. There were people who lauded her actions, but just as many who thought she was as much a criminal as the thugs she brought down. Inside, I knew that I was just as brutal and violent, but having Ghost, my own Ghost, compare me to her stung a bit.

But I could see it's point.

I sighed, and ran a gloved hand down my face. No counter statement came to mind so I let the topic of conversation drop.

"At least they seem willing to work with you," Ghost conceded.

"And they didn't try and pitch a Wards recruitment," I agreed.

"Would you have taken it?" Ghost asked. "It wouldn't be the worst thing because you'd have a fireteam, resources, and everything else you'd need."

Hesitantly, I shook my head. "No," I said after a moment. "I don't think so. Not after clashing with them. It would be awkward, and honestly, I don't want to get involved with another group of teenagers."

"Exactly!" Ghost exclaimed. "But, would you eventually? Maybe the Protectorate?"

Putting myself under the control of an organization just didn't sit right with me. But being a part of an organization was a good idea.

"...Maybe," I mumbled. "I'd rather recruit my own team. Lead them."

"That holds promise!" Ghost acknowledged. "Shame they can't be other Guardians. Unless…"

I pushed myself away from the air conditioning unit and stared at Ghost attentively. "What do you mean 'unless'?"

Ghost shook back and forth, like someone shaking their head 'no'. "I don't want to give you false hope, Guardian."

"Ghost…"

I reached out to grab the little drone, but it zipped away faster than I could close my hand.

"Hey, look!" it exclaimed. "Another note!"

That was quick, I thought. The last note had only been left a day ago, and I usually had to leave a thank you note before I saw another one. But down there, tacked to the telephone pole was a folded note fluttering in the wind.

I floated down from the roof and landed next to the telephone pole, then detached the note and read it.

It detailed the location of a stash house. The writing in the note was significantly more legible than my previous notes, and unlike them, this new one wasn't signed. Someone named Jerry or Jason or something had penned the previous notes. Seriously, his handwriting sucked. But now, perhaps I had a new informant, or Jerry had teamed up with someone. Regardless, I didn't want to pass an opportunity like this up.

"It's a stash house," I told Ghost. "Not too far from here, either. Think we have time to investigate?"

"Are you doing anything else with your time?" Ghost asked coyly.

I shook my head.

"Well, tinkering," I clarified. I wanted to build up my armor a bit. Install a strength module and maybe sensor suite. I had left my fabricator working, and by now it should have finished with a new capacitor and focuser.

"You have all night," Ghost said. "It couldn't hurt to just check it out. A little reconnaissance if nothing else."

"Fair enough," I conceded. I turned and gave it a glare. "We aren't done with that conversation though."

oooOOOooo

It didn't take me long to reach the location detailed in the note, and as was habit, I perched atop a nearby structure to survey the area. The building in question was a condemned office complex that, according to the business sign on the front, used to house a real estate business and a law firm. While still fairly close to downtown, we were far enough east that a building like this was odd. Perhaps that's why it was now condemned.

The building itself was two stories tall and made of red brick. Every window I could see was boarded up, each plank of wood tattooed with graffiti. There was only one person standing outside, and as usual, he did his best to look like he wasn't guarding anything. He leaned casually against the facade of the building, a cigarette hanging from his lips and a smart phone in his hand lighting up his face in the dark. The low light vision that my visor provided let me get a clear look at the man. He was undoubtedly a gang member. Tattered jeans, leather jacket with an Eighty Eight on the shoulder and shaved head.

I flitted across the rooftops around to the back side of the building and saw much the same; boarded windows, and an emergency exit that had been, oddly enough, welded shut. Most likely, I realized, by the gang members to keep unwanted people out. Having seen what I needed, I made my way back to the front of the building. When I got there, the guard snuffed his cigarette out on the bricks then wandered off muttering about how he needed to piss.

Seriously? I thought. This was too easy.

"I doubt we'll get a better opportunity, Guardian," Ghost advised me.

I nodded in agreement. My helmet rematerialized in my hands and I sealed it over my head. One more cursory glance told me that there were no security cameras, so I deemed it safe to proceed. Then, I glided down to the entrance. It was a single door, mostly glass that was covered by plywood, with a handle instead of a knob. I reached down and tried the handle.

The door was locked, obviously, but I needed to try anyway. If the guard was stupid enough to simply abandon his post, then that cast doubt on whether or not they were intelligent enough to bolt the doors shut.

But that wouldn't stop me. A thin flame of solar energy ignited at the tip of my right index finger with a hiss, and I pushed it slowly into the locking mechanism of the door. When it was so much slag, I tried the handle again, and the softened internal mechanisms of the latch merely fell apart, and I was able to open the door.

My revolver materialized in my grip, and I was struck by the thought that I hadn't yet named the gun. It was my go-to weapon for most engagements, and it had served me well enough so far. It deserved a name.

But that could be decided later, I thought as I crept over the threshold and into the building proper.

Just past the door was a lobby that at one point had probably been nice. Marble tile floors were covered in dust and scuff marks, and the once fine carpet in the hallway leading to the first floor offices was frayed and filthy. The burgundy paint that colored the walls was dingy and peeling, and the ceiling tiles were starting to rot. I wondered how long this building had been in disuse, or at least by anyone other than the Empire.

I swept through the bottom floor, room by room and moved on once each was cleared. Every office showed signs of being uninhabited for years. Eventually I made it to the steps leading to the second floor and made my way cautiously up to the top.

There were more offices up here, a placard at the top of the steps declaring that this floor was the law offices of Beck and Campbell, injury attorneys. Or, as my dad used to call them, ambulance chasers.

But like the first floor, this area was abandoned. None of the rooms showed signs of any kind of activity and I started to feel unease. Eventually I came to the last room of my sweep. It was the main office, and I could imagine either Beck or Campbell setting up in here as one of the partners of the firm.

Carefully I opened the door…

Suddenly my HUD lit up with red explosive warnings. I looked down and saw that I had tripped some kind of switch.

I only had moments to curse myself for my stupidity before I was engulfed in a fireball.

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Jul 26, 2017

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#770

Thanks again to WirelessGrapes for checking and editing.

I had the presence of mind to look over my shoulder and at least try to Blink out of the room. Unfortunately, with the layout of the building, my Blink only took me as far as the hall before I found a wall obstructing my forward progress.

I admit it, I panicked. Instead of doing the smart thing and teleporting the rest of the way down the hall, I ran back the way I had initially come in a frantic bid to escape the exploding building.

There was no way in hell I could have made it. I could run, sprint all out at around forty miles per hour. About three miles south of my hideout was a construction zone where the Brockton Bay Police put up a speed monitor. It would radar cars that drove past and flash a sign at them, letting them know just how fast they were going.

In a moment of curiosity, I ran past that monitor a few times. The fastest I managed was thirty nine miles per hour, pushing my Light to the limit.

But here, in the middle of an exploding building, it wasn't nearly fast enough.

I felt a crushing pressure as the explosives caught up with me. There was a sudden loud noise, then I could neither hear, nor see anything. I wasn't dead. I knew this because I felt pain. Everywhere. Then, I felt an impact and rolled for a while before coming to a stop, blind, deaf and with every nerve in my undead body on fire.

For all I knew, I was literally on fire.

Moments passed, and I felt a nudging at my shoulder. Since I could neither see or hear, I swatted wildly near where I thought it was coming from, gasping as my shoulder and back both protested the movement. But the nudging continued, more frantic this time.

I Blinked rapidly to try and clear my vision, wincing when it reversed, going from all dark, to all white, before finally settling on slightly blurry.

My heads-up-display was flickering in and out. Well, half of it was. The other half was gone, along with the faceplate of my helmet. Error messages were flashing at me, telling me what was wrong with my armor systems, but I could barely make them out through the blood that was dripping back on my face. The other half was open to the air, and through the hole I could see Ghost bobbing up and down frantically, trying to get my attention.

"I'm okay, I'm-" I coughed, "-fine," I said. Or shouted. I still couldn't hear anything.

Ghost said something, it's occulus flashing. Then, it looked to my left, dropped slightly and zipped off in the opposite direction.

I rolled to the left as much as my broken body would allow and ignored the searing pain that the action sent through everything. Approaching me was a man wearing a white business suit, with a white shirt and tie. His skin and hair were pristine, and his eyes were devoid of any iris or pupil. I was struck by the ridiculous thought that he was a living mannequin.

I recognized him as Alabaster; a parahuman member of the Empire, and a nasty piece of work.

He had two pistols. One was still holstered underneath his jacket and the other was out, held loosely in his right hand. He sauntered toward me and crouched when he got close.

His lips barely moved when he spoke, and I was never very adept at lip reading, so I had no god damn clue what he said. But he punctuated his statement by tapping the muzzle of his handgun against my helmet.

I had a few options here.

First, I could play dead. This would be harder to sell, since he had already seen me roll over to face him. He more than likely knew I was alive, but not how hurt I was. Which was pretty badly, if I had to admit. If my body still functioned like it did when I was actually alive, and not undead, then I was probably going into shock.

Since I knew Alabaster was a brute and a sadist he would probably try and hurt me further. Failing that, he would execute me. I didn't know how much light Ghost had accumulated, so it followed that I wasn't sure if Ghost could revive me should that happen. And Ghost ran off anyway, the coward.

And, I doubt Alabaster came alone.

Second, I could try and spring a surprise attack. This option was pretty much out from the start, since I could barely move, much less spring up and start fighting. I needed to regenerate, but I didn't know how long it would take to get back into bare minimum fighting form.

Compounding on the problems of that, my armor was pretty much scrapped if the errors and warnings could be believed. Ninety percent of the micro servos were non-functional. The life support was offline. And my targeting assistance was gone too. At least my shields were still there, if overloaded for the time being.

That mean I needed to delay. Stall as best as I could until my shields could regenerate along with my body.

I needed to play to Alabaster's sadism, make him think that I was suffering and that he could prolong that suffering.

"Oh, my God..."I wheezed, bringing my arm up to cradle my ribs. "I can't feel my legs..."

Alabaster said something, this time it sounded like he was really far away and underwater. My hearing was returning, a constant high pitched ring instead of dead silence. Slowly, the ringing faded until the sounds of the city returned. I could hear a fire, the building that just blew up, obviously, and further to my left, I could hear muttering and laughter.

I saw that Alabaster was looking at me expectantly, and realized that he asked me a question.

"I-I," I stuttered intentionally, making my voice as shaky as possible, "I can't h-hear you."

Alabaster frowned harshly. "Don't fuck with me, bitch," he drawled. "I do not like repeating myself, but I'll do it once. I said, since you can't feel your legs, you wouldn't mind if I put a bullet in one, would you?"

Shit, this wasn't going to work. What could I say here that wouldn't give my game away or make me look weak? Nothing really. I also couldn't attack suddenly; wheezing about my legs was not just a bluff. I really couldn't feel them. My back was broken in at least two places from the pain I felt. Maybe more.

I needed to stall for time, and my earlier idea about playing to his sadism seemed stupid all of the sudden.

Apparently I took too long in replying, because Alabaster put his gun against my left knee and said, "Looks like I need to decide for you."

Preparing myself for the pain of having my knee ruined, I winced and gritted my teeth. But the pain never came. Instead, Alabaster looked over his shoulder, an annoyed expression on his face.

"Kaiser said he wanted her alive, Krieg," Alabaster drawled. "He didn't say anything about in one piece."

I had to force myself to not sigh, either in relief or frustration. Not only did I have to deal with Alabaster, but Krieg was another member of the Empire's parahumans. There was far less information about Krieg than there was about Alabaster. Only that he did something with kinetic energy.

So that was frustrating.

But my back chose that moment to reconnect with my lower extremities with a tingling sensation not unlike my legs falling asleep. That was followed by pain, as I became aware that one of my legs was broken.

I chanced a look down at the leg in question while Alabaster and Krieg argued about how badly to maim me before dragging me before their leader.

Sure enough, my left leg was mangled. The boot of my left foot was in tatters, along with the underlayer all along my calf. The armor panels were cracked and sparking slightly, and none of the nerve synapses were functioning. The lower half of my lower leg was bent at about a fifteen degree angle toward my right leg, and my… tibia? One of the bones was sticking through the skin about an inch, blood dripping off the jagged edge and pooling on the concrete beneath me.

This time I did groan. It would be hard enough to fight with my armor malfunctioning, but to try and fight with one leg? I checked again, and yes, my right leg was fine. Fine enough at least. But just having one leg would make things exponentially harder.

Alabaster rose from his crouch and walked back toward where Krieg was standing with four rank and file E88 members. They, at least looked apprehensive being here, and I couldn't really blame them. I had done a number on the gang presence around my hideout, and they had every right to be afraid of me. In fact, I welcomed their fear. It meant I was doing well.

Krieg himself looked like a Nazi SS lieutenant, but with a gas mask over his face straight out of a horror movie. He seemed confident, almost bored to even be there.

I took stock again of my situation. The rest of my body recovered enough that I could move, if not fight. Ghost never gave me the full details of my regeneration, but I knew enough that my powers would prioritize the worse injuries before the minor ones. Unfortunately, I knew that my leg wouldn't heal until I could set the bone, and the rest of my minor injuries, like the various contusions and ruptured organs and cuts wouldn't heal until I had a chance to rest and recover my Light.

So, that meant I needed to focus on escaping rather than fighting.

With Alabaster and Krieg still arguing, and the gang members focused on the argument, I glanced around and picked my egress path. About forty meters away was a cross street, and a few meters beyond that an alley way. If I could Blink there, and hop the rest of the way, I was reasonably certain that I could get far enough ahead of my pursuers that I could escape.

As soon as my shattered HUD indicated that my shield was as charged as it was going to get, I looked to my right and 'up' and Blinked.

Now, Blinking isn't exactly teleporting. Ghost called it 'instantaneous travel', meaning that I needed a clear line of sight. I could Blink anywhere I could see, including through windows, but the glass would shatter because I was physically moving to that location. Sure, it only took a few picoseconds for me to arrive, but my Blink could be interrupted.

Furthermore, the position I was in when I started the Blink was the position I would end up in. That meant when I arrived at my chosen destination, my shattered leg was on the curb while the rest of me was in the gutter of the street.

Pain raced through me and I rolled over to vomit in the street. Now, since I didn't strictly need to eat, since food was only converted into Light, I hadn't eaten in days. That meant all my stomach did was constrict and push up bile, making my eyes water and my torso constrict, agitating what I now knew to be broken ribs. Most of them on the right side of my chest, in fact.

Still, I had the presence of mind to scrabble upright on my good leg, and start hopping the five or so meters to the alley. All the while I was dry heaving and trying to ignore how my frantic hopping further agitated my injuries.

Behind me I heard the Empire members shout in alarm and the sound of their shoes slapping on the sidewalk as they started their pursuit. But still I hopped, debating on using the remaining six or so meters of my Blink to make it to the alley.

I'm glad I didn't.

I glanced up as a whistling noise sounded above me. I spotted a dumpster hurling through the air directly at the entrance to the alley and I didn't trust myself to make it in time. More likely than not, I would be crushed beneath it. Sure, I could simply have Ghost revive me when the Empire left, but that was one card I wasn't ready to play. Once word got out that my resurrection caught on camera wasn't a one time deal, well… I had no idea what would come of that, but I didn't want to find out.

So, instead I looked up and Blinked in the air, to the rooftop of one of the buildings next to the alley. I ended up about ten feet above the surface of the roof and landed in a heap, my normal grace non-existent because of my injuries.

Rolling onto my back, I looked in the air as a girl, clad in a black robe with red, runic trimming rose above the lip of the roof. She was riding a manhole cover like a flying surfboard, and there were various pieces of rubble and other objects orbiting her like she was the star of a solar system.

It was Rune, yet another goddamn Empire parahuman.

"Mother fucker," I cursed.

Seemed like Krieg and Alabaster hadn't underestimated me back there. I wondered if there were any other parahumans lurking about. Maybe Hookwolf, or Alexandria? Wouldn't that be just great?

"Yeah, that's right, bitch," Rune mocked as she rose above me. "You can't get away from me that easily, even if you can fucking teleport."

I sighed, and started gathering solar energy in my hand. It was slow to respond since most of my reserves were tied up in regenerating my body. I would have materialized a gun, but my revolver was buried somewhere in the ruins of the building that was blown up, and Ghost zipped off somewhere safe, and it had all my engrams.

So solar grenade it was.

"Language," I chided, and I whipped the orb of energy at Rune.

She made to evade the orb, but when it got close, I clenched my fist and the orb bloomed into a small sun. Rune shrieked as her robe caught fire, and swerved away, frantically slapping at her costume.

I spared only a moments satisfaction as I watched her flee, wisps of smoke trailing behind her. Then, I turned and Blinked to an adjacent building.

But Rune had distracted me long enough for the others to catch up. Alabaster jumped up on the roof with me, his arms pinwheeling in midair, and he landed with a thud, staggering a few steps. But his pistols were out, and as soon as he regained his footing, he started shooting.

He was a fantastic marksman, though not as skilled as myself. My shields were good enough to absorb the first two shots, but the third ripped through my lower torso before I could throw myself behind some machinery. I hissed in pain, and pressed a hand over my kidney. It came away dripping with blood.

My Blink recharged then and I immediately teleported about twenty feet away to the next rooftop. My landing was rough, and I hissed in pain as my injuries were jostled. Alabaster followed, easily clearing the ten foot gap between buildings, and rolling to dissipate his forward momentum. He came up shooting again and I took two more bullets before I could find cover again.

I swore. I needed a gun. Fortunately, I knew where to get one.

"You can't hide forever little girl!" Alabaster mocked.

I peaked out from behind my cover, a metal air duct, and a bullet ricocheted off the metal right by my head. Wincing, I flinched back. My injuries made themselves known again and the pain took my breath away.

One of the gang members peered over the lip of the roof, clinging to the roof access ladder on the side of the building. A broad grin spread across his tattooed face, and I could imagine that he thought he had me. A notch on his belt, as it were, to show everyone that he killed a parahuman. A hero. But as he put his hands on the edge of the roof and pulled himself over and up, I moved.

My Blink placed me next to him, and before he could react, I wrapped my arm around his neck, hauled him over the edge and crushed neck in one smooth move. Then, I dropped the corpse, picked up his gun, and spent my remaining Blink charge moving back to cover.

Alabaster started swearing and threatening harm but I ignored him in favor of quickly checking the gun. It was a small caliber semi-automatic pistol. I flipped the decocker lever down, and ejected the magazine and quickly counted the rounds. The magazine was fully loaded, with eight 9mm rounds.

I groaned in frustration. The gun wasn't ideal, but it was at least a weapon.

Pulling the slide back, I chambered a round, then leaned around the air duct and put two rounds right in Alabaster's chest. He hadn't been in any kind of cover, standing right in the middle of the open where he had landed before.

6 bullets left.

Alabaster staggered back, a look of stunned disbelief on his face as his pristine white suit started to stain red. Then, he reset. It was as if he just stumbled backward instead of taken two bullets to center mass.

Even his fucking clothes were flawless again.

I wanted to throw the gun away in frustration. It was for all intents and purposes useless against Alabaster. But I knew it could still be used effectively against the two remaining gang members. And, I was pretty sure neither Krieg or Rune had brute ratings.

Speaking of…

I dove away from my duct work as a dumpster, the same one from before if the graffiti could be believed, flattened the steel and crashed loudly onto the rooftop. Once again, my injuries made themselves known and I gasped as the pain sucked the breath from my lungs.

I had time to see Rune hovering back toward me, riding the same manhole cover from before. Only this time it looked warped and a little sad since my solar grenade melted it a little. Her robes were frayed and singed on the bottom edges and what I could see of her face above her mask looked furious.

She had picked up additional ammunition on her return; there was a concrete jersey barrier, a motor scooter and a freaking steel girder.

Over by the ladder, the other gang members and Krieg finished their ascent to the roof top. I put a bullet right in the forehead of the first gang member, his bald head whipping back in a spray of blood. He toppled backward off the ladder.

5 bullets left.

But any further shots were obstructed as Rune set the jersey barrier down, obstructing my line of sight to the others. Then, the girder slammed down by me and started to bulldoze me, and the pieces of the rooftop the impact broke, toward the edge.

Eventually, the momentum stopped. I tried moving and realized that I was trapped. The girder was across my torso, and the rubble of the rooftop buried my legs. Between the pain and the fact that the strength enhancement in my armor was destroyed, I couldn't budge anything. All I could do was watch as Krieg and the gang members slowly approached me. They were joined by Rune as she slowly hovered down to the roof.

One gang member, a muscular man with long, greasy hair, and the word 'DEVAST8' tattooed across his jaw snarled angrily at me.

"Bobby was my friend, you fucking cunt," he shouted, brandishing a battered crowbar at me. I decided to call him Devastate, after his stupid choice in tattoo.

"Well, good for-fucking-him," I groaned.

Devastate replied by kicking me in the face with his motorcycle boot. The armor was still good though, broken as it was, and I barely felt it. The pain from moving my injuries was worse. The other gang member, who looked as stereotypical for a skin head neo-nazi that you could possible get joined him but he took a baseball bat to my chest.

Krieg gestured at me, then at the two gang members, and I felt myself slow down, while the two gang member sped up. Kinetic control, I thought. Krieg could manipulate kinetic energy, siphoning it from others around him and using it to slow, or speed up other things. He was taking my latent kinetic energy, and using it to speed up the gang members attacks. That was how Alabaster got to the roof top in a single jump, despite having no movement power, or brute rating.

This is it, I thought as the attacks kept coming. Kicks, baseball bat and crowbar beatings. I was going to suffer my first death as a cape at the hands of two gang members with delusions of grandeur.

"I thought we wanted her alive," Alabaster said.

"You brought up a very valid point, Alabaster," Krieg said. His voice echoed inside the gas mask, giving it a creepy quality. "We will leave her alive."

Then, out of nowhere, Glory Girl swooped in and shoulder checked Rune off of her floating manhole cover. The robed girl was sent over the edge of the roof with a shriek, and I heard her impact on the street below with a meaty thud. That was gonna hurt.

Before the others could react, Glory Girl turned around and stopped over us, hovering and taking quick stock of the situation. Then, she dove down, knocking the gang members assaulting me off their feet. She then lifted and hurled the girder off of me. It landed near Alabaster. Close enough that I couldn't believe it was a coincidence.

At the same time, Krieg held his hand out toward the gang members as they fell, draining their kinetic energy to speed himself up. As I lurched upright, moving the debris from my legs, running to the edge of the roof and jumping off.

Oh, no you don't, I thought savagely.

I looked over at Alabaster, who was currently evading Glory Girl's wild punches by the barest margins. It baffled me as to why Glory Girl was helping me, but I wasn't about to take an opportunity like this for granted.

Leveling the 9mm at the thugs who seemed to be moving in slow motion, I double tapped, putting two rounds in each of their chests. Then, I hobbled to the edge of the roof. I had something more personal in mind for Krieg.

1 bullet left.

Down on the street, Krieg seemed to be running away. He was moving at a respectable twenty or so miles per hour, but he wasn't too far away for me to catch with my Blink. So, I teleported down in front of him.

He couldn't stop in time as I reached out and blasted him in the solar plexus with a wave of raw force. His forward momentum met my energy and he was blasted backward to land flat on his back. He was wheezing through his gas mask as I hopped over to him. But I felt no sympathy. Mercy was the furthest thing from my mind. I wanted vengeance.

That night was the closest I had come to being killed since I actually died. I had thought I was invincible, especially after my fight with Glory Girl. But I learned then that I wasn't. Far from it in fact.

I bent down and and pointed my gun directly at one of the eye holes on his gas mask. He started to make chuffing noises and blood leaked from underneath the sealing edge of his gas mask. It took a moment, but I realized that he was laughing.

"What the fuck?" I asked in disbelief. "What's so goddamn funny?"

Krieg wheezed as he tried to get enough breath to answer me. I belatedly realized that I probably crushed his rib cage, but I couldn't find it in me to care.

"You won't kill me," he gasped. "You know what will happen if you do. War, and Kaiser won't lose."

I took only a moment to compose my own answer.

"Fuck you."

And I shot him directly through the eye.

He didn't even scream, and after a few moments I stood up as best I could, leaving the fluids to drip out of his eye socket.

As much as I wanted to lie down there and sleep forever, I didn't know if Alabaster was dealt with. I took a few steadying breaths, hoping the dizziness from using up my Light reserves would go away. When it didn't, I turned around to head back to the rooftop to check on Alabaster.

I blinked back up to find that Glory Girl had trapped Alabaster in the dumpster, blocking the lids closed with the steel girder that Rune had tried to bulldoze me with.

"Clever," I grunted.

Glory Girl whirled on me, one fist raised to strike, but she stopped.

"You startled me," she admitted.

I just shrugged. I was done with everything, and just wanted the night to be over. The days to come would be long and difficult with having to rebuild and repair my armor, and regenerate from my injuries.

I pointed to the dumpster. "He alive in there?" I asked.

"Why wouldn't he be?" Glory Girl shot back. "Anything I did to him he just reset."

As I hopped to the dumpster, I noticed Glory Girl staring at the bodies of the gang members with trepidation. Based on my own experience fighting her, and the stories Ghost and I had heard on the PHO forums, almost all of the injuries she had caused in her pursuit of justice were accidental. She had probably never even seen a corpse.

"I'm going to need you to move this," I told her, tapping on the girder.

Glory Girl hesitated before replying.

"Where's Krieg?" she asked.

I immediately responded, "Where's Rune?"

"Down on the street. She's in pretty bad shape from the fall, but I zip tied her to a light post and called the PRT. Where's Krieg."

I pointed to where I had come from, and Glory Girl hovered to the edge of the roof, quickly flinching back at what she saw.

"You're a psychopath!" she accused me.

"Probably," I said uncaring. "But they nearly killed me. Now are you going to move this or not?"

"Are you gong to kill him too?" Glory Girl shot back.

I turned and glared at her, though the effect was lost with my injuries and only one visible eye.

"If I have to," I snapped. "But I doubt that anything I do will be permanent. I need to question him."

Unsure of my motives, Glory Girl floated over and lifted the girder off of the dumpster lid. She dropped it to the rooftop with a crash. Then, she opened the dumpster lid and hauled Alabaster out by the collar of his jacket.

He was pristine. No injuries, no stains from inside the dumpster, not even a wrinkle in his suit. I took him from Glory Girl, grabbing him by the lapels of his jacket like I did Krieg, and slammed him up against the dumpster side.

"Talk," I growled.

He spat in my face.

So, I lit him on fire.

Alabaster screamed, and Glory Girl moved to stop me, but I held out one hand to stop her from getting closer. Amazingly, it worked and she stopped in mid-air. A few seconds later, and Alabaster was pristine again.

"Talk," I repeated.

Alabaster chuckled, though the sound had an edge of hysteria to it once he realized what I could do to him.

"Torture me all you want, I won't say a word," he taunted.

So, I lit him on fire again.

When he reset this time, he looked a little panic stricken, so I repeated myself once more, lighting my hand with Solar fire.

"Talk!"

"Kaiser ordered us to set a trap for you!" Alabaster said, his voice almost a shriek.

"I know that much!" I shouted, putting my broken face plate right next to his face. "What does he know!?"

"Nothing! I swear, we know nothing."

I believed him. Perhaps he was lying, and I wasn't experienced enough to know otherwise, but I did know if someone repeatedly lit me on fire, I'd sing like a bird. So, I hobbled to the edge of the roof, Alabaster in my grip, before holding him out in open air.

"Go, tell Kaiser that if he wants war, he'll have it."

Then, I let him go.

When he recovered from the fall, he ran, occasionally glancing over his shoulder. Glory Girl came to hover next to me, but I noticed that she kept her distance.

"You're a psychopath," she repeated. "And you just let him go?"

I repeated my earlier action, and shrugged. Reaching to my neck, I undid the clasps that held my damaged helmet to my underlayer. It couldn't be transmatted into an engram now. At least not until it was repaired. But I needed it off of my head. "It's about sending a message," I said, rubbing a hand down my face. The glove came away red with blood.

"I'm pretty sure that message would be received loud and clear when his three capes didn't come back," Glory Girl said derisively.

I sat down on the lip of the roof heavily, sighing with the effort. This fight had messed me up. More than ever realizing that I needed a team. There was only so much I could do on my own, and this fight proved that I wasn't all powerful. I glanced up at Glory Girl, briefly considering and discarding the idea of asking her to join me. It still confused me as to why she helped me out, but at the moment she was being talkative and I didn't want to ask.

"True," I said at length. "But then he wouldn't know just what happened here. Alabaster is afraid of me now. I won this fight, admittedly with your help, but I won. They ambushed me, and injured, unarmed and out numbered, they tried to kill me. I won.

"And I'll win again."

Why is Glory Girl there? We'll find out next installment. This chapter was starting to bloat, and I could have written another 2k words before I got to where I had planned on ending it. So I cut it off. A good...third of the next chapter is written, and it should be done soonish. Thanks for reading!

Last edited: Jul 26, 2017

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SniperFrog

Jul 26, 2017

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SniperFrog

SniperFrog

Right between the eyes.

Jul 31, 2017

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#815

About a minute of awkward silence passed between Glory Girl and myself. Occasionally, I could hear a horn in the distance, or a far off scream of someone getting mugged or something. The building that had been blown up had caught fire at some point during the fight, and the crackling of the flame filled the background with a kind of white noise.

My injuries started to ache more as I sat there, and I adjusted on my seat to try and alleviate some of the pressure the brickwork put on my butt. It didn't work too well, and I sighed. I looked up at Glory Girl. She was hovering slightly behind and to my right, and looking down at me with a mix of confusion, fear and disgust in her expression.

Eventually, she floated down to settle next to me on the lip of the roof. She crossed her right leg over her left and leaned back on her hands.

I raised a questioning eyebrow at her.

"You really are crazy," she said at last. "Declaring war on the entire Empire like that?"

I thought I could hear a note of admiration coloring her voice, but it might have been my imagination. It was my personal opinion that Glory Girl would go solo if she didn't already have a team that consisted of her family. She would probably be easy to poach for my own team, though it was just an idea at this point, if she and I didn't have a rivalry already.

But what she said had me thinking, and second guessing myself. I had declared war on the Empire 88. I was a solo hero, a lone Guardian without a fire team. There was no way I could sustain a campaign such as the one coming on my own. I needed allies, and soon.

We both sat there in the cool night air for what felt like five minutes. My mind was racing, building and discarding plans at the speed of thought. I could feel my torso tingling; my regeneration beginning to fix my ruptured internal organs, and starting to knit my ribs together. My leg was still a no-go, the bone protruding through my shin. But at least it had stopped bleeding.

Glory Girl kept glancing at me, then staring at the ground beneath us. She looked back and forth a few times, once opening her mouth like she had something to say. I wondered why she wasn't leaving, or trying to arrest me. Eventually, I couldn't take it, and I looked at her, one eyebrow raised questioningly.

She stared back at me, wide eyed.

"Yes?" I prompted.

"You were right," she blurted.

"What?"

"That night, when we fought?" Glory Girl explained.

"The driver was a Neo-Nazi and the truck was an arms shipment." I said, my voice flat with no inflection. It was a statement, not a question.

Glory Girl looked away, contrite, and nodded slightly.

"Yeah, um… that," She mumbled. "My mom, Brandish?"

I nodded.

"I got in trouble, and she grounded me. Like, forever," Glory Girl continued. "She said that I-" her voice changed, dropping an octave and sounding snobbish. "-need to work on my judgment and impulse control and restraint. Otherwise I could cause irreparable damage to New Wave's image, blah, blah, blah..."

I assumed that she was mocking what her mother had told her. But Brandish was right, at least about the impulse control. And didn't that make me a hypocrite…

Still, the amount of damage the two of us caused with our fight was almost two and a half million dollars. Ghost had looked it up later and found that the truck driver had gotten away, and the highway was being detoured until they could repair it. I felt bad, but mostly because that entire night was almost for nothing. If I hadn't made away with some good weapons, it would have been.

Glory Girl continued, pulling me from my thoughts. "She's right though."

I blinked, stunned by that admission.

"But it's hard to hold back. I feel like the world around me is made of paper, you know?"

I nodded.

"But when we fought, and I clobbered you with that light post, and you got back up? I felt like I could really let go. Aaaand, you kicked my ass anyway," Glory Girl finished lamely.

I nodded again, feeling a bit like a bobble head at this point.

She started to kick her feet back and forth, the heels of her boots thumping gently against the top of the brick wall.

"Amy, my sister? Uh, I mean, Panacea?"

"Yeah?" I prompted, if just so I wouldn't have to nod again.

"She told my mom that there have been a lot of times like that. And that I'd call her out to fix the guy I pulped. I was angry at first but… Ames was right to do that."

I glanced away a confused expression on my face.

"But, why are you telling me all this?" I asked.

"Oh," Glory Girl said, blinking. "I guess it was to say I'm sorry. And you're a good listener, too."

"O-okay," I muttered. Well, I supposed talking was better than fighting, especially in my current condition.

I didn't know how to feel about this. Two fights now that prompted apologies. Granted, I had beaten up Velocity of the Protectorate, and Miss Militia apologized to me, but the comparison was there. It left me feeling like I was some cartoon protagonist that could punch her enemies and make friends of them. I started to wonder if and when Alabaster would come back, and tell me that he changed his ways.

Nah.

"So, yeah..." Glory Girl said, unnecessarily. "Don't think this makes us friends or anything," she hurried to clarify.

"Of course not," I agreed, feigning sincerity.

Truth be told, it hurt a bit. I was really lonely, and my one frame was the equivalent of a hamster or guinea pig for company. Ghost could carry on a conversation, but it was like talking with myself. Or, a copy of myself. Ghost still had differing opinions, and had it's own agenda, but conversation with it never felt right.

Glory Girl must have seen something in my face, cause she hurried to add, "You can totally count me as an ally though. We could seriously kick ass together."

I smiled slightly as the loneliness eased a bit. Perhaps I wasn't as screwed in the coming fight as I thought.

My body was mostly healed at this point, except my leg and side, where Alabaster had shot me. The bullet must not have exited the other side. I frowned, realizing that I was going to have to dig the bullet out in order for the wound to heal.

"So, uh, If you got in trouble and are grounded 'forever'," I said, making air quotes. "Why are you here?"

"We were out on patrol and saw the explosion," she explained, pointing at the rubble of the office building. "I hurried this way, then ran into your little drone. It told me you needed help, and to hurry and well, here I am."

That explained where Ghost went, but I wondered why it hadn't returned yet. It stung a bit that the little robot had abandoned me, even if it was to get help. The fight would have gone much more different if I had all my guns available to me. I resolved to ask when I saw Ghost again.

"We?" I asked Glory Girl.

"My cousin, Laserdream," she pointed out. "My mom wants me to keep patrolling, but I can't go solo anymore. I had to stay with Laserdream the entire time we were out… and ohmygod I'm going to be in so much trouble for ditching her!"

Glory Girl was clenching her hair and had such a panicked expression on her face that I couldn't help but laugh at her.

"Shut up!" she barked at me, but I only laughed harder.

"Seriously!" she pleaded. "I'm screwed."

Once I stopped laughing, and only the occasional giggle escaping, I tried to calm her down.

"You're fine," I pointed out. I waved a hand at the destruction in the area, and pointed at the only dead gang member that was visible, the bald guy I had shot off the ladder. "This is all my fault, not yours. If anything, you were restrained, and that," I pointed at Rune, who was still knocked out and zip tied to the light post, "was justifiable. You can't expect a flier to fall from the sky and not get injured."

"I suppose," Glory Girl mumbled.

Looking up, I spotted a red light in the air, about a quarter of a mile out and nearing rapidly. It was most likely Laserdream, and I mentally prepared for another fight.

"Tell you what," I told Glory Girl. "Assuming that your cousin doesn't try the kill me, I'll explain the situation to her, alright?"

The look of relief on Glory Girl's face was almost comical, and I would have started laughing again if I wasn't anticipating combat. But Glory Girl nodded eagerly.

"Do me a favor really quick?" I asked.

"Yeah?"

I pivoted on my butt, so my legs were facing Glory Girl and held up my injured, left leg.

"My leg won't heal, broken like this," I explained. "Pull on my foot so my bone goes back in and I can start regenerating."

"What?!" Glory Girl yelped.

"Come on, please?" I asked.

Glory Girl looked green in the face, and said, "I can get my sister to heal you-"

"Come oooon, this kinda hurts," I said again, wiggling my foot slightly.

With a grimace, Glory Girl took hold of my ankle and pulled. At the same time I pulled my leg back, and with a sucking sound, the bone retracted into my shin. A wave of nausea rolled through me and I had to fight the urge to throw up again.

Glory Girl took to the air and hovered a few meters away from me, rubbing her hands on the front of her costume and muttering, "Gross," over and over.

"Thanks Gee Gee," I said as soon as I got my gorge back under control.

Glory Girl stopped scrubbing her hands on her costume. "Gee Gee?" she yelped indignantly.

Anything I would have said in return was interrupted as Laserdream arrived. She looked much like I had seen in photos and television spots. She wore a one piece, skin-tight body suit with a crimson arrow that went from her left shoulder to her right hip. Various red lines trailed down her legs to her red boots, and a red head band kept her hair up, except her bangs, which trailed over one eye. The other eye looked furious, but thankfully, that anger was directed at her cousin.

"What the fu- hell, Glory Girl?" she snapped.

"Sorry, cuz, I forgot I was a faster flier than you," Glory Girl admitted sheepishly.

"You forgot?" Laserdream said indignantly. Then, she whirled on me, leveling an accusing finger. "And you!"

I put my hands up to show that I was unarmed and not hostile.

"This is your doing, isn't it?" she snarled.

Glory Girl flew up between Laserdream and me. "Easy, Crystal," she soothed. "Revenant is an ally."

Laserdream's arm and finger sagged slightly and she blinked in disbelief. "An ally," she said, voice flat. "Didn't Revenant kick your ass?"

"Yes," Glory Girl said, frustration in her voice. "But we talked it out. I should have investigated before diving in head first."

With a sweep of her arm, Laserdream gestured to the destruction and unconscious and dead bodies in the area, and incredulous look on her face.

Glory Girl just winced, nothing to say for herself.

"To be fair, if she hadn't arrived when she did, I would probably be dead," I explained. I pointed at the rubble of the building. "And that's the Empire's fault, not hers."

Silence hung in the air for a moment.

"The bodies are me though."

Laserdream palmed her face and ran it down, dropping her hand to her side.

The conversation stalled there, none of us having anything to say. Looking in the direction that Laserdream had arrived from, I spotted Ghost lurking behind the corner of a building. It seemed hesitant to approach, probably because it knew I was angry at it. Ghost and I were going to have a long talk when we got back to the hideout tonight. But first, I needed to get away from there.

My salvation came in the form of sirens.

Brockton Bay's emergency response was slow on the best of days. Crime was abundant here, and with the city being in the top five for villain population, there was always something going on. So, it didn't really surprise me that it took this long for any emergency crews or law enforcement to arrive. I assumed that Glory Girl and Laserdream would have to stay and deal with the authorities to avoid tarnishing their team's image any further.

Wiggling my foot, I tested my leg and found that it was healing. Not perfect, but enough that I could make my way back.

"You girls have this, right?" I asked, unnecessarily. Standing up, I grabbed my helmet from the rooftop.

"What?" Laserdream answered.

"Thanks," I said, stepping off the edge of the roof.

Glory Girl made a grab for me but missed, and I landed, absorbing the impact with my right leg. Then, I Blinked away, ignoring Glory Girl's angry protests.

I paused only briefly near Ghost, and without any words, it transmatted into my armor systems.

Then, I made my way home.

oooOOOooo

Ghost was silent for the entire trip back to the hideout. I knew that it knew I was angry with it by its silence. Usually, it would make some quip about the state of my armor, or a comment about the fight. Instead, it just lay dormant in side the systems.

I didn't say anything either. Nothing I could have said would come out as anything other than a scathing or sarcastic remark about what had happened.

By the time we got back to hideout, my leg had finished mending as well as the rest of my body save the wound to my side. It was still weeping blood, my regeneration keeping it from killing me, but it still hurt something awful.

Ghost rematerialized long enough to transmit the code for my security system, another of my creations, before zipping in to the hideout the moment I opened the door. Closing the door, I manually keyed in the locking code to seal the door behind me and followed Ghost into the dark interior.

Once in the shop proper, sensors picked up my ambient Light and the lights came on, illuminating the room. HK1 ambled over to me, its lens flashing in recognition.

"Welcome back, Guardian," it chirped.

Wordlessly, I handed the frame my ruined helmet and followed Ghost as Ghost hovered up into the foreman's office.

"Oh dear, oh dear," HK1 said. "I'll just place this on the workbench for you."

Up in the office, Ghost was hovering low over the desk, its occulus refusing to meet my own eyes. I could feel its shame and discomfort as much as it could feel my own simmering anger and resentment. My next words needed to be chosen with caution, since Ghost was my permanent companion. We would be together for the rest of our existence, unless one of us was destroyed. The last thing I wanted to do was make things more awkward.

"What the fuck?" I hissed.

So much for caution.

Ghost seemed to flinch, its front spines moving forward and its occulus squinting.

"Where the hell did you go?" I demanded.

Ghost bobbed back and forth slightly. It hovered over to the ruins of the old computer, which I still hadn't gotten rid of, then back to look up at me. Just when I thought it was going to speak, it did it again. I realized that it was trying to choose it's words carefully. "When you didn't respond-" It started, but it cut itself off. I "knew you were in trouble when you swatted at me so… You didn't get up and Alabaster was coming closer so I knew I needed to hide until you got up."

"But you didn't come back!" I shouted in response, slamming my gloved fist down on the desk. Ghost jumped in fright. "I needed my weapons, Ghost!"

"Your armor was ruined...is ruined otherwise I would have transmatted myself into it," Ghost explained, cowering from me. "Even after you recovered I couldn't risk getting close enough to give you one without getting shot by Alabaster."

I felt bad, being the cause of Ghost's fear. But I was angry, and the longer this conversation went on, the angrier I got. I thought about pulling on the Void, to try and calm down, but I didn't want to. The anger felt good. Cathartic. "I understand that, but you left me."

"I panicked because that was the first time I saw you losing a fight that badly, okay?" Ghost raised the volume of it's voice to match mine, rising up to meet my glare. "Then, I spotted Glory Girl and Laserdream patrolling. I thought that if I went and got help it would save you. And, it worked, right?

Ghost's voice was full of hope. Hope that I would forgive it, and hope that it had done the right thing. Honestly, it was hard to stay mad at it, and perhaps my anger was misplaced. This was ultimately the Empire's fault, and I needed to remember that.

Begrudgingly, I dropped the subject. "Yeah," I admitted. "It worked."

Still hopeful, Ghost continued. "And… you and Glory Girl are… friends now?"

"Allies…"

It was better than nothing. Perhaps, at some point in the future I could get to know Glory Girl. Maybe even have her on my team. We could work well together, her sowing chaos in the ranks of our enemies, me with my Light powers and guns… wait...

"My gun!" I cried. "I left it there."

My beloved hand cannon, unnamed but loved was buried in the rubble of the ruined office building. I couldn't let anyone have it. It was modified too much now to be of any real use for anyone other than myself since even the ammo was customized and only Ghost could create it. But it was my gun. My favorite gun.

My hand clenched reflexively, and I was about to bolt out of my hideout and run back to where the fight happened.

But Ghost said, "Nah, I got it before we left, Guardian." It's voice was bright and chipper as it transmatted the gun in question on the desk. "I know how much it means to you."

I snatched the revolver up and cradled it in my arms, stroking it like a beloved pet. The chrome finish was scratched. Again. But the gun as a whole was otherwise intact. More than ever, it needed a name and I resolved to come up with one before I headed out again.

"Thanks, Ghost," I said softly, never taking my eyes off the gun. I started to polish it, rubbing until the scuffs disappeared. "I- I'm sorry I got mad at you," I apologized. "But, I could have died."

"I would have brought you back after they left."

"But still…" I muttered.

"I'm sorry too, Guardian," Ghost said softly.

"Here, my phone," I said, setting the item in question down on the desk. "Go...browse or something. I need some time alone. If you need me, I'll be downstairs."

I could feel Ghost watching me, the concern apparent through our bond. I ignored it though, unable to dwell on it at the moment. I was still mad at it, but the anger had simmered, it wasn't worth bringing up again. Everything had worked out this time.

I had other things to worry about. My armor needed to be repaired first and foremost. Despite my powers, I was no more durable than a normal, squishy human. My armor augmented almost all my physical abilities, and if I had any brute rating without it, it was probably because of my regeneration alone.

Without it, I was considerably less.

Down in the shop, I found my helmet on the concrete floor. HK1, bless its metaphorical soul, at least tried to put it away. I picked the helmet up and started examining the damage. Its smooth, gunmetal gray finish was scratched and pitted from the damage it sustained in the explosion, the shiny alloy visible beneath the damage. Half of the 'V' shaped visor was missing, and the interior of the helmet was coated in drying blood.

I set the ruined piece of armor gently on my workbench, ideas already forming for repairs and improvements. Quickly jotting these ideas down on a notepad, I returned to inspecting my armor.

The rest of my armor was not in any better condition either. Piece by piece I took it off and inspected it. First was my overcoat. Made from a black, leather like material, it resembled a duster with the pads on the elbows and shoulders. On the right breast was a symbol that looked like two red, stylized 'M's that resembled a twin peaked mountain. Largely cosmetic, it incorporated an under-weave made of a Kevlar like fabric that gave it resistance to bullets and impacts. However, the explosion had tattered the fabric, and it was largely ruined. I pouted childishly. I liked that jacket.

Draping the jacked over a work stool, I removed the next piece of armor. My chest plate was dented and scratched, but largely undamaged otherwise. It was a glossy gunmetal gray, like my helmet, but fully functional with no cosmetic alterations. However, the neuro-connectors that relayed through my under-suit were fried. Detaching it from the under-suit, I placed it down next to my helmet.

My left boot was gone, either buried in the rubble of the office building or completely destroyed. My right boot was mostly fine, but missing the left made it otherwise useless, so I removed it and put it over next to the Glimmer Fabricator to be reclaimed.

The armor plates in my greaves were fine, to be honest. Just a few dings on the gunmetal armor plates. Even the neuro-connectors were fine. So those came off and went on another workbench, which I mentally called the 'okay' pile.

My gauntlets were good too, largely undamaged, but the ideas that had sparked from inspecting my helmet carried to my gauntlets as well. So I wrote them down too, and put my gloves by the greaves.

Lastly was my under-suit. The best I could describe it was a material similar to breathable, black latex with interface points for my various armor pieces. The entire inside of the suit was covered in probes that relayed information about my body back to the central processing unit and displayed it on my HUD. Unfortunately, it was ruined as well. It was ripped throughout, and completely missing where I lost my left boot. And the interface points had overloaded and melted in various places.

I stripped that off and placed it by my boot, leaving me standing on the cold concrete floor, completely naked.

While my body was unblemished, save the hole in my side where I still needed to remove that bullet, I was covered in soot and blood and really needed a shower. I put the tinkering aside and made my way to the locker room, grabbing a pair of needle nose pliers on the way.

The facility still had functional showers, three of them. They were mounted behind the row of lockers that occupied the center of the room. Each shower unit was tiled with sky blue tile and was separated by a divider wall for privacy that I doubted I'd ever need.

While the utility company had disconnected power to the building, the water company hadn't stopped the water. The hot water heater was an electric model, fortunately, since I never had to find a way to hook up a gas supply either. But the hot water was slow to move through the plumbing, so I started middle of the shower stalls and moved to the sinks to inspect the wound in my side.

Setting the pliers down on the sink, I prodded at the bullet hole. It was small and hadn't exited my back. That told me that Alabaster was using a small caliber gun, perhaps a nine millimeter or a twenty two. I picked the pliers up, and using my Solar powers, gently heated the tips to sterilize them. While I doubted I would ever get an infection, I wasn't one hundred percent sure, so better safe than sorry.

Once the tips were red hot, I steeled myself, gritting my teeth. Then, I plunged the tips into the open wound until I felt the bullet, gripped it and quickly ripped it out with a scream of agony.

My vision swam, and I nearly fell over but the feeling quickly passed and the hole began to seal itself as I watched. I took a moment to watch myself heal. It was wondrous.

Once the hole was completely closed, I went to middle shower and tested the water. It was a little warm, so I adjusted it down slightly and moved beneath the spray. I washed quickly, scrubbing the blood from my skin, then I moved to my hair, lathering it well and rinsing the sweat from it. It was growing back quickly. About two inches long now, I could style it in a decent pixie style if I so chose. I wanted to grow it back to my previous length, but knew that would be impractical. Having the hair get in the way while I fought, or having to stuff it under a helmet would get old, fast.

After my shower, I took a moment to inspect my reflection in the mirror. The girl looking back at me was a stranger. I didn't look like I did in my own memories. My face was fuller, with high cheek bones and large eyes. My mouth was still too wide, and set in a perpetual frown. I felt like I had forgotten how to smile.

My eyes hadn't changed color, thankfully, but they seemed to glow in the dim light of the locker room, lit from within by my Light.

Was I even actually alive? Ghost brought me back from the dead. I had been deceased for almost eight days, and had an autopsy performed on me. Ghost told me that I was sustained by the light, and if I was ever cut of from it, or separated from Ghost permanently, I would cease to be. Whatever that meant. Did it mean I would die? Or that my next death would be my last?

I didn't want to die again. I felt lucky that I got a second chance. Perhaps even a third or fourth and so on if I was sloppy enough. But I remember dying in that locker. That feeling of peace that was almost forced upon me. I never wanted to feel it again.

But like an idiot, I had declared war on an entire gang. What the hell had I been thinking? I had so much to do now.

Stepping away from the mirror, I felt my resolve harden.

Time to get to work.

So, looks like Taylor is in trouble!

I'm taking suggestions on a name for her gun. Try not using anything from the game, but otherwise, go wild. Also, I'm in need of a sounding board. Someone, or ones (plural) that I can bounce ideas off of and see how it fits. Ideally, they'd be well versed in both Worm and Destiny lore, but one or the other is fine. Hit me up via PM if'n youre interested.

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SniperFrog

Jul 31, 2017

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SniperFrog

SniperFrog

Right between the eyes.

Aug 12, 2017

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#908

Thanks to WirelessGrapes, OmniMessiah, and AvidReader605 and all they help they're giving me to make this a better story for you all.

My first major road block came with my glimmer fabricator.

When Ghost first revived me all those weeks ago in the police morgue, it supplied me with a set of basic armor. Its various subsystems allowed did various things to enhance me physically even beyond what the Light could do for me. My armor was what allowed me to run at forty miles per hour, jump ten feet in the air and crack brickwork with my fists. It housed the shield generator which had saved my skin so many times now. Contained withing its sub-layers were neuro-conduits that linked through my undersuit to allow the on board processor to help with my very thinking. It literally made me smarter.

This armor, Ghost explained, was "Vintage Golden Age", meaning it was very old. And very, very complex.

But it was still basic, in that I had plans flitting about in my brain to make it better. Circuits that would further enhance my perception so that time felt like it was standing still. Devices that would condense and concentrate my Light. Shields that would make me practically invulnerable. Things like this were not only possible, but achievable for me.

And my Glimmer Fabricator, while a technological marvel in and of itself was woefully unprepared for what I needed it to do. The devices and materials that were needed in the construction of what I wanted to do to my armor required my Fabricator to have a tolerance of literally plus or minus one micron. But my current Fabricator, the Mk. One, wasn't capable of holding a tolerance of one millimeter.

The current version of my Fabricator wasn't even capable of repairing my armor much less improving it. I could cobble together fixes that would work, albeit barely. I would still have a visor that would display my HUD, and power my shields, though they were less than seventy percent of what they should be. But my actual armor was compromised. Boots, gone. I had a pair of steel toe work boots instead. Gloves, intact, but nonfunctional. My chest plate had micro fractures running through it, so I salvaged it for Glimmer.

My coat was in tatters, which I think hurt the most. I loved that coat.

Ghost made the mistake of telling me that a fully functional, Golden Age glimmer fabricator could print a whole gun, or piece of armor in a matter of minutes. It slunk off and hid from my glare, realizing that its little fact did nothing to make me feel better.

So I found myself glaring at my fabricator as it whirred about on its axes, reprinting the processor for my new visor. The visor that was made from the faceplate and computing systems of my old helmet.

After that, I needed to make a new part for the GlimmerFab Mk. 2. But I also couldn't stay idle and wait for my equipment to be finished before I started my campaign against the Empire. I had thrown down the gauntlet, challenged the Empire and I couldn't afford to let them shore up their defenses or come looking for me.

And I was almost out of Glimmer. The repairs of my armor pieces was taking far more than I thought it would.

In short, I had way too much to do, but nothing to physically do.

Ghost hovered up next to me and made a few minor adjustments to the blueprint the fabricator was using. Data streams flowed from its occulus into the main control unit of the fabricator. Satisfied with it's changes, it cut off the data stream and turned to face me. It was silent for a few seconds, and tilted slightly to its right, like a curious dog.

"Glimmer for your thoughts, Guardian?"

"I screwed up," I grunted. "My ego is going to get me killed."

Ghost righted itself and moved to face me. "This about the coming fight?" it asked.

I nodded silently.

"You'll be fine, Guardian," Ghost soothed. "And if you do die, I can just bring you right back!" It finished off its sentence with a little twirl, trying to cheer me up some.

"But, I don't want to die again." I whispered. Recognizing the mood, Ghost settled itself into a normal float.

And that right there was at the root of the problem. I still remembered the nothingness that followed my death in the locker. When my heart stopped beating, and my brain stopped processing, there was nothing. Just a moment between absolute terror, then peace, then I woke up on that examining table with Ghost hovering over me. Even thinking about it now sent chills down my spine and made the small hairs on my neck stand up. I never wanted to feel that again.

"Guardian, if you play it smart you'll do fine," Ghost said softly. "More than fine, actually. I have a plan if you're open to hearing it."

Despite my foul mood, my interest was piqued.

"I'm all ears."

"Long range, and hit and run," suggested Ghost. "You haven't had a chance to use your sniper rifle yet. Set ambushes and what not."

"So, you're talking about like… guerrilla warfare?" I asked skeptically. "Terror tactics?"

Ghost nodded.

"Sounds cheap."

"But effective," Ghost countered. "Remember, these are the people that lured you into a building that was laced with explosives by pretending to be people you trusted. Nothing is beneath them and nothing should be beneath you."

The little drone had a point. With my armor comprimised I couldn't really afford a direct confrontation with the Empire forces. They had already struck a substantial blow against me when I was at full power. Or as full power as I could be at the time. And they had used a vulnerability to strike at me, posing as someone I could trust and hurting me. So, it wouldn't be cheap. It would be sinking to their level and beating them at their own game.

"Speaking of, have we heard from Jerry since then?" I asked.

"I haven't seen any more notes," Ghost said forlornly. "And he never came by in person before, so..."

I was worried about Jerry. He had gone out of his way to help me and all that came out of it was his potential… probable death. Part of me wanted to go out and look for him, make sure he was okay. At the very least, I needed to thank him for what he did, and more pragmatically he could possibly be an ally in the coming fights. Realistically though, I knew he was probably dead; if he wasn't an E88 member to begin with. I put the thought from my mind

"Nothing we can do, Guardian," Ghost said, echoing my thoughts. "We don't know where he lives or works. Just that he's in the area, and the Empire already know about the pole."

I nodded, and looked at my fabricator as it started to whirr and change axes. It was starting to print the mounting brackets that would hold the processor in the rest of the assembly, meaning it was almost finished.

"As soon as my visor is finished, I think we can go out and hit a few targets." I said.

"Agreed. The sooner this is over, the sooner we can start looking for a way back to the Traveler."

Ghost statement had me stunned. Realistically, I knew that I would end up wherever it was that Ghost came from. I could always feel the presence in the back of my mind, the Traveler, calling me back. But I had only just gotten started here. I had so much left to accomplish, and somehow, the Darkness was leaking into Earth Bet.

"So soon?" I asked.

"We need to get back, Guardian," Ghost stated. "It what you were made for."

"But what about here?"

"What about it?"

"What do you mean 'what about it'?" I snapped. "This is my home. I can't just abandon it!"

"The darkness is not here, Guardian." Ghost countered, annoyed.

"So that Vex was 'nothing', then?" I shot back, making air quotes.

"In the scheme of things, yes, it was nothing. Somehow the Vex are getting here, probably through whatever brought me here, but there isn't anything we can do about it until we get back."

"I'm not going until I know at least Brockton Bay is safe, Ghost."

"You wouldn't be saying that if you knew the Traveler."

"Well, I don't, so I'm staying and that's final."

"Guardian-!"

"FINAL!"

oooOOOooo

Things were tense between me and Ghost after that. I didn't want to be in the hideout anymore, so I threw on some civilian clothes; some gray jeans, a tee shirt that had the logo for a musical group called Blackmill splashed across the chest. Then, a fleece lined, brown hoodie went over that and I left to go for a walk.

Ghost stayed behind with the excuse that the GlimmerFab(TM) needed some additional calibration before we started work on my project. I waved it off, not really hearing the excuse. The shop was stifling and I needed to be anywhere else.

In retrospect, leaving Ghost was a stupid move. Ghost was my safety net should I ultimately lose a fight. But, I wasn't going to look for a fight. I didn't really know where I was going at all.

Not needing to sleep had the disadvantage that without constantly checking a clock, I lost track of the time. As such, the bright, morning sun caught me off guard and I had to blink a few times to get the glare out of my eyes. That little inconvenience pissed me off far more than it had the right to. I didn't need to eat, sleep, go to the bathroom or really do any of the normal functions that came with being human, but the sun could still blind me.

With a growl of frustration, I forced my eyes to focus and started walking west. I blended in well enough with what little foot traffic there was. Here, in the commercial area of Brockton Bay, people still had jobs despite the state that the economy was in. Box trucks were making deliveries, people were commuting to work and the area was waking up.

I found myself lost in thought as I walked, mainly focused on where things were going. From the time Ghost had brought me back on that table, I knew, instinctively that I was destined for something far greater than myself. Far greater than Brockton Bay, or even the United States. I was part of something vast and beyond the understanding of man, and the thought was honestly a bit intimidating.

But at the same time, the Traveler was a nebulous concept. My powers supposedly came from the Traveler, and while Ghost promised me that one day, soon I would get to see her myself, I still found it hard to believe.

I was always a very logical person. It ran in the family. As such, we were never really very religious. If I couldn't experience something with one of my senses, I found it hard to believe.

But the Traveler made its presence known in the Light. When I focused inward and concentrated, I could feel the Light inside me, and through that I could feel the Traveler. I didn't understand it, but I could feel it.

Here though, my home, I knew. I could smell the pollution from the city. Taste the salty ocean air. Hear the cries of the people suffering. It was a tangable, real thing and it needed my help.

It was a duality that ran parallel to my own inner turmoil. The remnants of what I was, fighting against what I was becoming. The girl, and the weapon.

So lost in my thoughts was I that I didn't realize at first that I had wandered west into the good part of town. One of the most affluent neighborhoods in the city, this was where the Mayor and his family lived along side the CEO's and other people that still had money. Most of the neighborhoods were gated communities, and this was the part of the city that had Immaculata, a private school.

I stood out like a sore thumb here, my ratty street clothes drawing dirty looks and drawn blinds from the residents.

But also in this part of town was the cemetary that my mother was buried. My wandering path had lead me here, and I decided to pay a visit.

oooOOOooo

My mother had a simple headstone. Made out of gray granite, it was set in the ground with its polished surface facing up and engraved with the words:

"Annette Rose Hebert

1969-2008

She taught something precious to each of us."

The groundskeeper hadn't been by in a while, I assumed, since the stone was covered in dead and decaying leaves. The grass surrounding the plot was brown and crunchy, only a few blades starting to turn green with the onset of spring.

I knelt down and brushed my hands across the face of the stone, sweeping the leaves and debris off to the side. With a sigh, I settled on my knees and stared down at the grave. I had no idea what I had hoped to accomplish by coming here but I felt like I should say something.

"Hi mom," I whispered. The wind kicked up then, a breeze blowing dead leaves across the cemetary.

"I did something stupid," I continued. "You always told me to think before I did anything. Think twice and then act."

Looking back at my actions over the past few months, I had been doing the exact opposite of that, if I was honest with myself. Instead of planning, I was running head first into every problem in my path and using my new powers as a bludgeon instead of the scalpel that I knew they could be.

It had worked so far, but how much of that was luck, I didn't know. It was bound to catch up with me sooner than later.

"I managed to make enemies of an entire gang. The Empire, and well… I may have declared war."

Finally saying it out loud to someone other than myself helped me realize just how stupid I actually was. The Empire 88 was the biggest gang with parahumans on the east coast. Their presence was concentrated in Brockton Bay, but they had branches all up and down the eastern seaboard.

And I had decided I was going to take them on all by my lonesome.

I laughed, short and humorlessly.

"Yeah, I got powers. Pretty cool ones too, if I say so. They're pretty much all over the place, and I doubt that I'm as powerful as the Triumvirate, but I'm still pretty powerful. I can throw fire, Void energy, invent and build things. I'm tough, strong and fast. And I'm pretty good with a gun too."

I pulled my revolver from the waistband of my pants where I had it tucked and hidden under my hoodie. With Ghost back at the hideout, I wasn't able to transmat my weapons in and out of storage, but I wasn't stupid enough to venture out without a weapon. I spun it around my finger a few times before cradling it in my hands, handle in my right, and barrel in the left.

"This gun is precious to me. I took my first life with it and it's been with me through thick and thin."

The light caught on the cylinder, highlighting a scratch along its length. I frowned, and pulling the cuff of my hoodie over my hand, tried in vain to buff it out.

"It needs a name, mom. And, I can't think of a better name than the nickname you gave me. Little Owl."

Newly christened, Little Owl seemed to gleam in the afternoon sunlight, proud of it's new name. I smiled.

I sat there in silence, lost in memories and memories of memories of my family. Eventually, I noticed that I was crying, silent tears dripping from my eyelashes, and I wiped them from my face with my hoodie sleeve.

"My powers aren't all great, though. I had to die to get them. Literally. And as a side effect of that, I lost so many memories."

I had to take a moment to get my emotions back under control, and I picked at a few blades of dry, crunchy grass around the grave stone. Swallowing the lump in my throat, I went on.

"I forgot so many important things. I forgot dad. I forgot that you were dead, and I had to grieve you all over again."

My voice cracked and the emotions came pouring out. I allowed myself some time to cry, great heaving sobs wracking my body.

"And now Dad's gone. Our house is for sale and I don't know where he went. I feel so alone, Mom."

Eventually, the tears dried and I felt drained. Yet, at the same time, I felt lighter, a burden I didn't know I had been carrying lifted from my shoulders.

I rose to my feet and pulled my phone from my pocket to check the time. It was getting to be late afternoon, and I needed to get back. I had preparations to complete and planning to do.

"I miss you mom. I wish I could see you again, but I'm probably immortal."

I stood there for a few minutes more, unsure of how to say goodbye. Parting ways was always awkward for me, and it seemed that it carried over to dead people too.

Eventually, I shoved my hands into my hoodie pocket awkwardly, and did a half turn from the headstone.

"Bye," I offered lamely, shaking my head and walked back out of the cemetery.

I passed by someone who I assumed worked there, and I thanked him for letting me visit. He just smiled and gave me his condolences.

Making my way back to my hideout, I thought about the coming conflict. I wasn't ready, and I doubted I ever would be. But I was prepared to face it head on with every ounce of determination I had.

Bit of a shorter one, this chapter. Up next is an interlude and then we get to the action.

Last edited: Aug 12, 2017

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Right between the eyes.

Aug 22, 2017

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#970

Thanks to my crew again, for the ideas and editing.

Days like this were why Emily Piggot hated her job.

Things had been quiet in recent months, right up until the emergence of Brockton Bay's newest parahuman, codenamed Revenant. There had been no fighting beyond the usual minor skirmishes across territory lines. The big name villains had been quiet, letting their rank and file gang members shoot it out.

But, in January, when Taylor Hebert triggered and shot her way out of the police station morgue, it was like she kicked over an ant hill.

Revenant, Taylor, had steadily been waging a one woman war against the Empire 88's territory in the middle of the Commercial District, just a few miles west of Downtown proper. The map of the city, currently the main window on Emily's computer showed a smudge of magenta, the PRT's chosen color for Revenant, right in the middle of the red of the Empire's territory.

Like an ant hill, the city was now a flurry of activity. Reports showed that the Empire was gearing up for an assault to take back their territory, consolidating forces on the edge of Revenant's five square miles of claimed land.

The Azn Bad Boys, the main competitor to the Empire's dominance over the city, seemed to sense weakness and were pushing south from the South Docks, and east from the downtown coast to take bits and pieces of the Empire's territory. While they were doing that, the Archer's Bridge Merchants were pushing from the northern docks. There was fighting all over the city, concentrated along territory boundaries.

The powder keg that was Brockton Bay was about to explode, and it was all the fault of one young girl.

Emily hated parahumans. She had ever since the cowards abandoned her and her team in Ellisburg. She and one other, a man named Thomas Calvert had been the sole survivors between three full PRT squads. A single parahuman had been the cause of thousands of deaths, and nearly a dozen more fled when they could have helped.

It was her opinion that parahumans embodied the very essence of their trigger events. And, being the director of Brockton Bay's PRT, Emily knew of so many different trigger events, each worse than the last. While each trigger event was required to be on file for psych profiles, if nothing else, it seemed to suggest that something inherently changed in a parahuman when they underwent them.

But Revenant's trigger event was possibly the worst she had ever heard. Stuffed in her own locker that had been filled with toxic waste, she died and was resurrected after her autopsy. Worse, it was one of the Protectorate's own, a Ward, that had committed that horrible crime.

Sophia Hess, Shadow Stalker, had tried to run when she was confronted. But she was apprehended swiftly, not even leaving PRT headquarters before she was stunned with a taser and foamed. She violated her probation, and the murder of Taylor Hebert was ruled to be in the first degree.

The students that attended Winslow High School practically lined up to throw Sophia under the metaphorical bus, including one of Sophia's best friends, one Madison Clements. Clement's traded critical information about the case for a plea bargain.

What came to light was a protracted bullying campaign by a parahuman against a normal human, which, in her own mind, only reaffirmed Emily's beliefs against parahumans.

Ultimately, Sophia was sentenced to twenty five years in a maximum security penitentiary after a minimum of five years at the parahuman rehabilitation center in Aurora Colorado. Emma Barnes, another of Sophia's friends, was sentenced to five to fifteen years with a possibility for parole after two years.

Emily hoped to use this information to help convince Revenant to join the Wards should she be apprehended, but she firmly believed that this...war was the absolute worst time to attempt it. Revenant's psychological profile suggested that she was skittish and paranoid, and any attempt to bring her in during this campaign would cause Revenant to brand the PRT and Protectorate firmly as enemies.

Her monitor flashed a reminder about a meeting with Armsmaster. She dismissed it, then took a moment to organize the chaotic mess that her desk had become into a semblance of order. She quickly gave it up as a lost cause and waited patiently for the hero's arrival.

She didn't have to wait long. Armsmaster arrived on the other side of her office door and knocked once. Though insufferable to work with, and as ambitious as they came, he was always incredibly punctual. One of his redeeming qualities.

"Enter," she called.

Armsmaster was an imposing presence, clad in his full armor. Midnight blue with silver accents, the armor was sleek and streamlined, packed with far more technology than should be physically possible due to his Tinker specialization. Usually, he wore a close cropped, meticulously groomed beard, but in the past few days he had let it go, and it was messy, giving him a scruffy appearance.

Since Revenant's appearance, Armsmaster had been feverishly Tinkering in his workshop, trying desperately to create something that could counter, or at least defend against the solar radiation that Revenant could use. But every attempt, while a working, usable device, failed to do anything against Revenant's power. Just how Armsmaster knew what Revenant's power did was beyond her, more the expertise of the egg heads in the lab, but regardless, the results were less than optimal.

Armsmaster came to a stop in front of Emily's desk and placed a tablet, screen up, in front of her. Then, he stepped back and stood rigidly straight, his gauntleted hands clasped behind his back.

The meeting was called by Armsmaster to discuss what to do with Revenant, and as such, Emily expected the tablet to detail plans and other minutia detailing the rogue cape. She picked up the device, noting that it was a custom tablet, most likely built from scratch by Armsmaster himself. She held it gingerly, less to avoid damaging the tablet but more because she felt dirty handling the Tinkertech.

Still, she scrolled through and read what he had to say.

There were notes on Revenant's personality though they were nothing new. Also included were tentative ratings; Brute 4, Blaster 6, Breaker 6 and Mover 3, with a potential Tinker classification as well. She noted that they had gone up since Revenant's initial debut. Reading them now, she mostly agreed, though she would up the Blaster rating by one. The areas of the highway at the scene of Revenant and Glory Girls fight that had been impacted by Revenant's fire had vaporized; the bitumen boiled away and the aggregates melted into molten rock.

The last section detailed what Armsmaster wanted to do with the coming conflict. He wanted to do the exact opposite of what Emily herself wanted; to flank Revenant, take her down and bring her in. She let a frown show as she set the tablet down in front of her. Folding her hands on the desk, she looked up at the tinker, patiently waiting for him to say something. He seemed to be content to allow her to speak first however.

"The psychological assessment is as close as we can get without actually having a chance to analyze her," she began. "Though, I think your threat assessment is a little low, particularly on the Blaster rating."

Armsmaster frowned, but waited for Emily to continue.

"However, I disagree with your tactical assessment."

When Armsmaster started to protest, Emily spoke over him.

"The last thing we need right now is a parahuman of Revenant's power against us, Armsmaster," she said firmly. "What Shadow Stalker demonstrated, if nothing else, is that forcing a parahuman that does not want to join us, to join us, is a grave mistake."

"We have had some successes, Director," Armsmaster countered. "Madcap was successfully rehabilitated as Assault, and Bastion as well after his arrest in oh nine."

"Bastion, if you will recall recently was captured on a cell phone slinging racial slurs at a young boy that merely wanted a photograph. Then we have Wildfire, in Colorado who went rogue after burning down a wing of the Denver Protectorate headquarters," Emily pointed out.

"They made a mistake, allowing revoking her probation before she was ready," Armsmaster said.

"And yet, she still did what she did. Three people died, and ten more had severe burns. And here, we have Shadow Stalker. Assault had Battery, something to keep him in line. Revenant has no such lever."

Armsmaster frowned harshly. Emily knew that Armsmaster would take Shadow Stalkers downfall personally, as he had been in charge of the Wards at the time. When it came to light that Shadow Stalker had murdered Taylor Hebert, Emily removed him and put Battery in his place. Evidently it was a good move, as both Clockblocker and Vista had good things to say about Battery's leadership.

"No," Emily continued. "I would propose a gentler hand with Revenant. Let her fight her war. We will step in if things escalate too far. I doubt that Revenant will win, but the Empire will not get away unscathed."

"And if she does win?" Armsmaster asked, his voice tight with frustration.

"Then the Empire is weakened."

"And when she loses? What if she is killed?"

"Then we can wash our hands of her," Emily said.

Though he clearly disagreed with her orders, Armsmaster nodded once. "Do you have an alternate plan to recruit her then?" he asked. "We could definitely use someone as powerful as Revenant on our side, to even the balance in this city."

"I do," Emily said simply. "We need to isolate her, so that she feels she had no allies. Hence, why we will not step in to help or hinder her in her fight. I have already called Brandish, of New Wave to recommend that she and her team offer no assistance either. Should she lose, and she most definitely will, we will approach her then, and offer her what we can. Resources, information, a team.

"And I'm positive she would like to know what happened to her father."

oooOOOooo

Victoria Dallon sat on her bed in her house clothes; a loose pair of light blue pajama pants and a white tank top. Her legs were crossed underneath her, lotus style as she leaned over a biology textbook, chewing on the end of a pen. She had to be careful, since with her aura field she could easily crush the pen between her teeth.

She had a test at the end of the week. One she hadn't studied for. At all. So now she was cramming, since the test was only two days away, and Amy had given her crap for it. And refused to help her study.

Since her hospital visit, her sister seemed to grow distant from Victoria. Victoria didn't know why, but she was sure it had something to do with Amy having to save her life. Amy stopped asking her for flights to and from the hospital, instead taking the bus.

A hot topic of conversation at school was the new cape, Revenant. It was obviously know that Vicky and Amy were parahumans, and members of New Wave. So, people often asked the two of them if they knew anything about Revenant. However, Amy would snap at the other students, and tell them that Revenant was a loose cannon, and needed to be stopped.

Eventually, people stopped asking Amy. But Vicky was all too happy to tell anyone who would listen that yes, she knew Revenant and that they might even be friends. Amy didn't like that either.

Suddenly, her cell phone rang, startling her. Vicky's pen cracked between her teeth, and she spat out the plastic shards. Thankfully, the ink tube hadn't ruptured, so she didn't have ink in her mouth. Tossing the broken pen into the trash can by her desk, Vicky picked up the phone and looked at the screen.

The caller I.D. said "Unknown Number" and "Unknown Name".

She frowned. It didn't happen often, but occasionally fans would get New Wave's personal phone numbers and call them. Amy had it the worst. People who got her number would call and beg her for healing. They'd offer to pay exorbitant sums, but to Vicky's knowledge, Amy had yet to accept. She always said that 'a Hero never gets paid for their service, so why should she?'

The phone continued to ring, and Vicky swiped right, declining the call.

She looked back at her biology text, and belatedly realized that she had been reading the same paragraph for the past ten minutes. The thought of Revenant had distracted her, and she was day dreaming about the other cape, and thinking about why Amy was mad at her.

She floated over to her desk and grabbed another pen, this one a click type. Settling back by the book, she folded her legs beneath her again and started to read.

Then, the phone rang again.

"Unknown Number" and "Unknown Name".

Vicky groaned and swiped right again.

She had not even looked back at the textbook before the phone rang, yet again. She swiped left this time, and brought the device to her ear.

"Look, jerk. I don't know how you got this number but-"

"Please hold for Revenant," a feminine voice said on the other line.

"Oh."

Revenant was calling her? Why? Maybe she wanted Vicky to patrol with her. The two of them could do some real good in this city, watching each others backs. They could make sure neither of them went too far, and if they did, they could always call Amy to come help. Amy would see that Revenant was cool, and they would all be friends and…

How the hell had Revenant gotten her number?

She didn't recall giving it to the Rogue cape. She was going to the other night, before Revenant had fled the scene of the fight, she never had the chance. And yet, Revenant had still gotten it.

"Glory Girl?"

"How the hell did you get my personal cell phone number?"

There was an awkward pause on the other side of the phone.

"Ghost is pretty good with electronics," Revenant said, her voice small. "I didn't think you'd really mind, though. I just needed to ask a favor of you."

"Yes. Absolutely."

"What?" Revenant sounded confused.

"Yes, I'd love to patrol with you," Vicky clarified, her voice happy.

"Oh, well, that's not what I wanted to ask, but yeah! I'd love to go on patrol at some point."

"What did you need then?" Vicky asked.

Revenant hesitated. "An ally," she said.

"Hell. Yes." Vicky said, a vicious smile on her face. "Let's smash Nazis again!"

"Excellent!" Revenant cheered. Vicky could hear the smile in the other girl's voice. "Look, I'm making my first strike tonight. There is supposed to be a gathering at Montrose and seventh. That's… west? Yeah, west of where we had that fight the other night. Meet me at Montrose and fifth in an hour, and we'll head there together."

"Alright, I'll see you when I get there."

"Okay, bye."

The phone disconnected and Vicky belatedly realized that she should have gotten Revenant's number before they hung up. She could do that when they met that evening. Levitating off her bed, Vicky floated over to her closet to get her costume. She pulled the white outfit from the closet, and cast one last glance at her abandoned textbook.

She should really be responsible and study, but she really wanted to go out instead. She knew she was one of the few parahumans that genuinely enjoyed their powers. For most parahumans, their powers served as a reminder of the worst day of their lives. A sort of shitty consolation prize. Yeah, you lost your family in a house fire. Here, have the ability to control fire.

Vicky, however, got her powers when she was fouled in a basketball game. No horrible trauma, or physical mishaps. And she won the parahuman lottery. Strength, flight, invulnerability and an aura that could cause panic or adoration.

Quickly, she slipped into the costume, and took one last look at herself in the mirror to make sure she was presentable. She adjusted her tiara a bit higher on her head and nodded to her reflection. There, ready.

"And just where do you think you're going, young lady?"

If Vicky hadn't already been flying, her mother's voice would have caused her to jump in fright. As it was, she whirled around, and backed into her vanity mirror. It rocked precariously on top of the vanity, but she snagged it and steadied it before it fell.

"Mom!" she cried.

Carol Dallon stood in the doorway of Vicky's room, her hands firmly on her hips and a disapproving frown on her face. She raised an eyebrow questioningly.

"Uh, out, patrolling?"

She shouldn't have phrased it as a question, but as it were, she could see her mom didn't buy it.

"Try again," Carol said.

Sighing, Vicky settled back down on the floor. She sighed and looked to the side, one hand clasping the elbow of her left arm in a nervous gesture.

"I got a phone call from Revenant," she said. "She needs my help."

Carol's expression turned skeptical and she shook her head.

"This is the same Villain that put you in the hospital, Vicky," she said. "Why would you want to help her with her foolishness?"

"We reconciled our differences!" Vicky protested. She jabbed a finger at her window. "She's out there making a difference, and we just fly around and look pretty."

It seemed that her mother was not in the mood to argue. "No, Vicky. New Wave is hands off on this one."

"Of course, we are," Vicky snapped cynically.

"Victoria, no! And you're still grounded, remember?"

With a groan of frustration, Vicky stomped back to her bed and slumped down dejectedly by her text book as her mother turned and left the door way. She briefly toyed with the idea of flying off anyway. It wasn't like her mother could stop her, after all. But, no. She was already in enough trouble, what with the last two times she had encountered Revenant.

...She just wished she knew Revenant's number.

I'm not too happy with this one. Interludes seem to be my and my muse's bane. I may go back and edit it later, flesh it out and what not, but it gets across what I wanted to convey. Now that it's done, I can move on to what we all want; Taylor shooting Nazis.


	11. exodus1

Jan 21, 2017

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#1

Alright, well, this story, like Outcry before it, is being written/co-written by myself and the user Zaru this fic will generally be more lighthearted than our previous collaboration given the setting for those of you whom are worried and will, again generally speaking be much less high strung, or such is our intent at the very least :)

At any rate, since neither myself or Zaru have a great deal of time to devote to writing, though that might change in the near future for the better, the updates on this fic will be spread out to give us a bit more breathing room (and to allow us to also work on Outcry without too much pressure)

So in short the fic will be updated every two weeks, on fridays. Thus the next scheduled update is slated for the third of February.

I'd like to thank our editor James D. Fawkes over on SV for all his hard work.

We have Fanart :D

So without further delay:

PROLOGUE

Null Space.

Scientists and fiction writers alike had theorized about this place. A place between universes, a gap in what could be considered reality or the 'material' places.

Science and technology were advanced, but they had limits, and it was only now that general theory was even beginning to stand on the cusp of understanding alternate planes of reality and perhaps — incredibly — traveling to them.

As far as he knew, he was one of a handful of people to have ever come here. Maybe even the second ever.

He might have been freaking out like a kid in a candy store if not for the very real danger he was in.

Low gravity environment, Hiro's analytical side provided in a rapid-fire sequence as his mind raced, trying to take in all the factors and account for everything that could go wrong in this place. 'Presence of oxygen? Possible. Suit's not hermetically sealed, but the ambient temperature can't be too far below freezing or else I'd be feeling it. Atmospheric pressure seems normal...

So much unknown, and unexplained, so much he could discover...but that wasn't what he was there for and he had a very real time limit.

"Baymax! Can you see her?" He yelled.

"Scanning." The big, healthcare robot, decked in enough armor to tackle a battle tank, answered him, as calm as ever.

Robert Callaghan's daughter was in this place somewhere.

They had to find her and get out before that portal collapsed and trapped them all here forever.

God...how long had she been here? A year? Five? Ten?

'Based upon details of Professor Callaghan's appearance around the time of the incident versus now, factoring the effects of stress on aging, accounting for the growth of the vegetation at the test site...no less than five months, but no more than five years…'

At least five months without food or water...

How was she still alive?

Hiro shook his head; it was something he could figure out later. Right now, he needed to focus.

Hiro guided Baymax through the field of debris that spun about, still bleeding momentum from the force that had sucked it in. Half-awed by the eddies and swirls of the nebula-like clouds that stretched out to infinity, he found himself wishing he'd installed a camera in his helmet when they finally spotted the pod.

"There!" He pointed, pulling one of the magnetized gloves off of the corresponding node on Baymax's armored back.

The big red robot drifted through the debris field towards the pod, latching onto it with gloves and boots like an overgrown limpet. Hiro turned, looking over his shoulder towards the wormhole that lead back home to San Fransokyo. Just go through that and they're in the clear…

"Alright buddy, let's turn this thing around and —"

"Secondary life-forms detected."

Hiro blinked. "What?"

"Secondary life-forms detected." Baymax repeated. "One hundred seventeen meters." He pointed. "That way."

Hiro looked into the void towards where Baymax was pointing. The debris was still spinning off, chunks ranging in size from a soccer ball to a monster truck pinballing against each other and jetting off in new directions. The prismatic gasses and dust inched outwards in the distance like the corona of a supernova, but there was nothing else of note, nothing more to see — except, he realized as he spotted it, a glimmering white dot.

Were those...lights?

He looked to the Wormhole again, worry and fear mingling in his chest. If they stayed too long, then it would collapse, and both he and Callaghan's daughter would be trapped, again.

And then, he remembered his brother.

Tadashi had looked just as afraid, just as worried.

And he'd still gone into that building.

Steeling his nerve, he looked to Baymax. "Ok. We can't leave whoever it is in here. Thrusters on, take us closer. Be fast and careful."

They moved, and Hiro took a moment to peer through the glass of the pod: Callaghan's daughter resting within, unconscious and completely unchanged.

He had no idea what had preserved her, but he was glad of it. It looked like she hadn't aged a single day.

"Visual contact." Baymax brought him back to the present. "Scanning. Shall I intercept with the pod and Miss Callaghan?"

Hiro looked at the glimmering white...square.

No. Not a square...

A… door?

There was a woman standing there, a woman whose age he couldn't quite place with a suit and a hat that looked straight out of a fifties movie.

From the distance, he couldn't make out details, but he saw clear movement behind her — a person? Two?

With the backdrop of light, it was impossible to see. But the sound he heard in the next second was unmistakeable.

*BANG*

*BANG*

Thunderous, echoing out into the void- Two gunshots.

Fear, sharp and cold, lanced through his stomach with each massively loud crack.

Then, through the door thing, a body was thrown, tossed in here like so much garbage.

"Female victim injuries severe, consistent with —"

"Go! Go! Get her!" And Baymax's foot and jetpack thrusters burst alive as he pushed the pod towards the individual. Hiro gave directions, guiding Baymax around any debris as they angled upwards towards the falling figure, who was slowly spinning into the weightlessness of zero gravity. It was then, when he glanced up for a reason he wasn't sure of, that Hiro finally got a good look at the woman in the miniature doorway just before it closed.

Dressed in a suit and fedora, sculpted with attractive, distinctly Italian features, she gave him the most dismissive of glances — like he was an ant or a stray housefly — before turning away, the doorway sealing shut behind her.

No time to focus on that. Hiro turned his eyes back to the falling figure, clothed in little more than a hospital gown, with a crown of long brown hair that spread out and undulated in the lack of gravity.

He stretched out his arms to grab her.

He caught her, shifted her so he could get a better grip, and looked at her face.

Only to discover the massive hole in her head.

And her missing right arm.

"B-Baymax...she's —" He gulped, nausea welling up in his gut.

He'd just witnessed an execution.

"She's dead..."

"Incorrect."

Hiro blinked, looking at the back of his robot's armored head. "What?!"

"The patient has been grievously injured, but is still alive. The bullets did no extensive damage to her brain. Based upon her heart rate, blood pressure, and neurological activity, the chances of survival are —"

"Double time back! Now!" He shouted.

"What is double time? I am unclear on the definition of —"

"Double thrust output! Max power!" Baymax obeyed, the rocket boots' ignition doubling in output as Hiro held onto the person in his arms tight. His magnetic boots and suit were the only things keeping him upright and not flying off as Baymax held the pod, veering straight towards the wormhole and to home.

(X)(X)(X)

Hope you all enjoyed, leave a like and comment :)

Last edited: Oct 16, 2018

Stories:

\- Complete: - Reconciliation (Worm AU), A knight in the Dark (Naruto/Souls, Oneshot), Lines (Mass Effect, Oneshot), Like Mother like Skitter, Unfit (Naruto)

\- In progress - Outcry: Worm/Dark Souls (Alt Power), Souls of Heroes (Fate/Souls), Legacy Undone (Naruto), Umbram Mortis (Worm AU), No good deed... (Worm AU), Overwatch shorts, Exodus: (Worm/BH6),

-TV-Tropes pages-

Outcry / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, No Good Deed (Fanfic) - TV Tropes , Reconciliation Worm / Fan Fic - TV Tropes , Like Mother Like Skitter / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, Legacy Undone / Fan Fic - TV Tropes (Please contribute if possible :))

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Ld1449

Jan 21, 2017

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Ld1449

Ld1449

To the last, Kill them all

Feb 3, 2017

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#89

Well, here we are, third of February as promised.

This chapter is a little short for the wait, but the following ones are significantly 'beefier'. So I hope you all enjoy it for what its worth :)

Anyway, without further delay, here's the chapter:

Arc 1

COLONIZATION

1.1

Feel.

She could feel.

Soft.

Around her.

Top and bottom.

Front and back.

There was...a tone.

Incessant, repeated, rhythmic, almost mathematical in precision.

Eyes...she had eyes.

(What are eyes?)

Was she blind? It was dark.

Muscle by muscle, fiber by fiber, she became aware, controled, moved.

Her eyes opened. Light.

Blinded. It hurt. She wished to close her eyes but was not fast enough.

Then her sight cleared. All colors. Bright. Too bright.

The tone continued.

Beep. Beep.

Vision… all colored softness on her. All color walls. A shape, four corners, glimmers of color and light on its side.

She heard the sound of a click. And voices.

Her eyes moved to the sound, trying to find it with these senses. Something else moved in the space around her it emits sounds before it sealed a gateway.

(A door? A door. What is a door?)

Time passed. She didn't know how much.

Then...they were there, more of them. They entered, walked around her, they made sounds...communicating through sound…

Primitive.

(Talking. Is it called talking?)

One reached down. She wanted to pull away, take control of it, to cease its movements, but nothing happened…

It reached down and she felt her head move. Softness.

She listened with her ears, but felt her eyes falling closed on their own. Heavy.

She felt sluggish, weakened.

Did the creature do something to her?

They stood around her, touching things, touching her. One of them got close. Bright light in the ocular organ. She closed it shut. Tried to assert control over it.

It did not obey

They stayed, communicated.

Then walked away, leaving her.

She...did not understand.

She felt tired again.

She slept.

(X)

Noises once again.

Communication.

Communication through sound...

(Talking.)

She opened her eyes, half lidded and feeling tired.

She saw many shapes enter the room. Two big. One of smaller stature. Two even smaller still. An obese one.

They did not obey.

More talking.

One with bright long fur continued to communicate, the sound was loud. It moved. Up and down.

Jumping...

Why were they around her?

Why didn't they obey?

She heard their voices soften.

They stayed.

Time passed.

One by one, they left the room when the white one waddled closer..

One of the small figures looked back for a minute.

She felt tired again.

Sleep.

(X)

She heard noises as her eyes opened.

They communicated.

Yes. Figures making noises. Communicating…

(Talking. They talk to one another.)

She did not understand.

It entered. Then another. Two. One small, one large and wide again.

They made more noise. Then the small one came closer, the large one waddling behind.

The small one leaned in close.

It made more noise.

She did not understand.

"I'll help you… I'm not sure how much I can help. But I'll do everything I can. Promise."

She did not understand.

Time passed.

She slept.

Stories:

\- Complete: - Reconciliation (Worm AU), A knight in the Dark (Naruto/Souls, Oneshot), Lines (Mass Effect, Oneshot), Like Mother like Skitter, Unfit (Naruto)

\- In progress - Outcry: Worm/Dark Souls (Alt Power), Souls of Heroes (Fate/Souls), Legacy Undone (Naruto), Umbram Mortis (Worm AU), No good deed... (Worm AU), Overwatch shorts, Exodus: (Worm/BH6),

-TV-Tropes pages-

Outcry / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, No Good Deed (Fanfic) - TV Tropes , Reconciliation Worm / Fan Fic - TV Tropes , Like Mother Like Skitter / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, Legacy Undone / Fan Fic - TV Tropes (Please contribute if possible :))

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Feb 3, 2017

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Ld1449

To the last, Kill them all

Feb 17, 2017

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#115

1.2

It was just another day.

They came again.

The one called Hiro and the one Hiro called Baymax.

A young man and a fat balloon machine.

Thoughts, memories came easier, these days.

Images, the remembrance of pain, desperation…

The glare of golden light.

But she can't remember them. Hiro, Baymax.

Can barely even comprehend what they try to communicate.

She has become aware of her body now, muscles and limbs that ache as she moves them.

But it was important that she move, pain or not…

She started with her lowest extremities, the digits on her… legs…

(Toes.)

Her other digits were next...fingers.

The young man and the robot brought her things. Food. Sugars and carbohydrates and calories.

They were called snacks.

She prefered his foods to the others.

The others… the nurses, they called it rice porridge.

Sloppy, goopy. They didn't taste good, regardless of how many variations

They all made sounds… spoke.

Hiro always spoke the longest.

She tried to categorize his sounds, determine the pattern as he babbled on.

'Aunt Cass'. Our fat cat, Mochi. Gogo, Wasabi, Honey Lemon, Baymax, Fred, Big Hero Six, School, Building, Designing, creating, Tadashi, Portals, Healing, Recovery.

These sounds he made often.

She listened, tried to discover more of his sounds, pay attention.

Eventually, he would leave. When he did, she was left alone, and soon a nurse would enter and turn on the television, or turn it off if it was time to sleep, placing the remote back and fixing up the coverings over her before leaving again.

It was her fifth month before she discovered how to do it herself.

It was her eighth before her fingers had the dexterity to press the button.

She wished to listen to more words.

(X)

Hiro and Baymax were back again, and in Hiro's hand were two cylindrical containers…

Cups, she remembered. They were called 'cups.'

"Heya." He smiled as he walked in, sitting next to her. Her eyes followed his movements.

"So… I noticed you've been getting bored of the porridge, right?"

It took her a long time to understand, longer than normal, Hiro was already continuing by the time she did.

"I stopped by Samurai Sam's and…" He offered the cup and the straw. "I got a shake. It's vanilla!"

He reached towards her, angling the straw in a way that had become familiar.

She noticed that, the first time she could remember him doing this, he had to sit next to her on the bed. Now he could stand relatively comfortably.

He'd grown taller.

She wondered, then- how long has it been?

Her mouth opened slightly and clamped onto the straw before she suckled.

Her eyes made a bare rise upward, so slight that it would've been easy to escape notice.

It was…

"Patient is showing signs of endorphins and increased brain activity in the ventral stratium." Baymax intoned with a raised finger.

"Ventral Stratium?" Hiro asked. The flow was slow as he took out the straw.

"It is a part of the brain that is associated with the following emotions: Joy. Happiness."

"Oh!" Hiro brightened up. "You liked it?" he asked with a cheerful smile.

Her eyes went to the robot, half-lidded as they are. Baymax waved.

Hiro seemed to notice her stare.

"Oh yeah, I didn't tell you. I finally managed to reproduce a lot of Tadashi's old work. That means by this year's tech-seminars I should be able to show off to some of the big companies and see if we can get a mass production model running. Get some money flowing in."

He was smiling brilliantly, white teeth bared.

Whatever he was saying was pleasing to him.

"We're still awhile away from mass production, but it's a start. I'm still trying to find a way to mass produce him and help benefit hospitals."

The broken, suckling sound indicated the drink was finished, much to her disappointment.

Hiro pulled the straw away. "Anyway. I also finished some upgrades on Gogo and Wasabi's gear! Next week, I'll get to working on Fred's — gotta think of a new delivery system for Honey Lemon. Something that can't slip off her arm when she's running."

He continued to speak.

She listened.

(X)

More memories returned. Sometimes in the forms of dreams.

Sometimes, most of the time, those dreams were bad; leading to restless nights.

An overworked, absent father.

A betrayer who became nothing to her in the end.

Her power of control.

A system that enabled monsters.

An emotionless man in armor.

A girl who loved dogs and no one else.

A charming sociopath.

A darkness, trying to make a better life for his sister.

A friendly know-it-all.

A monster of the sea.

A snake in a man's clothing.

A malcontent healer.

A genetically altered, loyal companion.

A madman who wanted the world to burn.

A monstrous abomination.

Nine thousand beasts.

….

The golden morning.

Khepri.

The Endbringer she'd all but become...

She hated these. These nightmares. She couldn't place names on them. Only images. Faces.

But she was beginning to understand. Slowly.

It has been so long… In this bed. Being fed the porridge and the IV.

Hiro would always come.

She would see the ones he calls his friends. Gogo with the cautious look in her eyes. Honey Lemon with the constant smile. Wasabi, tentative and wary. Fred, loud, colorful.

When she looked upon them, she saw the dog-lover, the skull-masked darkness, the charmer, the sociopath, and the imp. She also saw images of the traitor, the friend she had lost before the nightmare began.

They came infrequently, standing out in her memory only due to her own broken recollections.

It was late in the day… the sun was already beginning to set when she heard the door click open.

"Oh! Hello!" said a...not-nurse.

She didn't recognize this one. Not one of Hiro's, not a nurse.

What did this one want?

Her face seemed familiar...

She brought a hand up to her hair, brushing it back behind her ear. It was short, barely reaching her neck.

"Hiro wasn't feeling too well today, so I volunteered to drop by while Baymax takes care of him."

She showed her teeth...a smile.

"Well, you can just call me Cass or Cassie. Hiro, his friends, and everyone else does. I mean, once you can speak again, of course. Not that there's any rush for that just to say my name but I'm sure you wanna be able to talk and say things for yourse —"

She made too many sounds, too fast. She only recognized Hiro, Cass, and Friend.

She stepped closer into the room, and Taylor's eyes finally found the brown bag.

The woman showed her...smile again, sitting down in Hiro's seat.

"Hiro told me you like the soup in the shop across the street, but they're closed for holiday today, so I decided to make you something. Its not as healthy —" she closed one eye and opened it again quickly — "but it'd be a sin if you go any longer without trying it."

She opened the bag and held out a white styrofoam container

She opened it, revealing a pale cube.

It looked like lumpy bread.

Strange ritualistic delivery…

The woman took a white plastic fork, sliced off a bit, and offered it out to her

Taylor opened her mouth and took a bite.

The woman didn't have a Baymax here to tell her what Taylor was feeling.

Nevertheless, she smiled brightly at the young woman's reaction. "Good, huh? Its called 'Tres Leches.' I probably butchered that pronunciation, but that name is still way better in Spanish than English, butchered or not — haha!" She laughed at herself.

She took another piece off with the fork, waiting for Taylor to savor and swallow, before holding it out again.

Taylor watched her eyes, as she ate the soft, mushy bread.

The woman's eyes turned up to her head, trailing down.

The light in her eyes dimmed, her brow knitting as her mouth turned down sadly. She reached her hand over, settling it on Taylor's.

"Who could have done this to you, sweetie? Such a cruel thing..."

Her words went by, unanswered.

Taylor just ate the soft, spongy bread.

As soon as it was done, the woman put the styrofoam container back in the bag, bunching up the brown paper and setting it down beside her.

Then, rummaging in her purse, she pulled out books…

Yes. She remembered that was what they were called.

Two of them.

"Well… I'm not sure if you like to read, but Hiro told me that the doctors say your recovery is a possibility, so I brought you this. Maybe it'll help.

She held out the book, showing it to her. Merriam-Webster Dictionary was printed across the front, though to Taylor, the letters were only strange, vaguely familiar shapes.

"This one's a dictionary." She smiled. "Its kinda boring, but it'll help you learn or remember words faster once you learn to read again. It has English in it, so I'll be sure to bring another dictionary with Chinese and Japanese in it."

Then she showed her another book. Adventures of Hucklberry Finn.

"This is Mark Twa —" She opened the book.

The door swung inwards.

"I'm sorry, Ma'am, but visiting hours are almost over," said the nurse in the doorway.

"Oh...yeah, I did come by rather late." The woman sighed, then smiled again, settling the two books beside her hand. "I'll come by and read them to you tomorrow, if Hiro's still not feeling well."

She smiled again, showing her pearly white teeth.

Taylor looked at her face, eyes narrowing in thought just a bit.

She shouldn't be smiling…

She did not remember her face bearing a smile...

After she left with another smile and a wave, Taylor was alone, the last rays of daylight fading as the sun set outside the window.

She looked down at the books.

The next day, when the woman returned, she didn't have enough time to read much aside from the Asiatic language books, so she didn't notice that the page towards the middle of the dictionary was folded.

(X)

In the weeks and months that followed, she lost track of time, of the passing hours and changing days.

When she was coherent enough to measure time, she measured it by the milestones she reached.

Three days after she could walk —

Two days after she learned to bathe herself —

One week after she learned that she could feel the insects in the walls, with the same sort of there-not there surety she had when she closed her eyes and still knew where her arms and legs were.

Three days after she learned to move those bugs.

Four days after she could remember how to use her senses of hearing and touch through their insect minds.

These were the milestones she used.

Always, Hiro was there, talking, helping, trying to make the time go faster.

The others came.

But it was always him that was there in the end.

As such, a day finally came where she felt she had to do something.

The day started out as it normally did. She would wake, be bathed, rest, read in private, and listen in to the world and goings on outside.

Around noon, Hiro arrived with Baymax.

"Hey, Sleeping Beauty." He offered a smile in greeting.

And from there… he kept talking.

She didn't blame him. It wasn't like she offered much in the way of conversation, these last few months… Year? Years?

Still. There was something he had to know.

"My name is Taylor."

The crash of Hiro falling over in his chosen seat sounded like a gunshot. With how loud it was, it was surprising that a nurse didn't burst in immediately, carrying a defibrillator.

Baymax helpfully leaned over him. "On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your —"

"You can talk?!" Hiro all but shot to his feet, staring at her with wide, shocked eyes, as an ecstatic grin began to stretch over his face.

She felt her own lips begin to curl up into her own, small version of a smile.

"Yes." She nodded. "And I have to say: you're not very good at the whole 'secret identity' thing."

His face was priceless.

(X)(X)(X)

Hope you all enjoyed it. The next chap will be the on the 3rd :D

Stories:

\- Complete: - Reconciliation (Worm AU), A knight in the Dark (Naruto/Souls, Oneshot), Lines (Mass Effect, Oneshot), Like Mother like Skitter, Unfit (Naruto)

\- In progress - Outcry: Worm/Dark Souls (Alt Power), Souls of Heroes (Fate/Souls), Legacy Undone (Naruto), Umbram Mortis (Worm AU), No good deed... (Worm AU), Overwatch shorts, Exodus: (Worm/BH6),

-TV-Tropes pages-

Outcry / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, No Good Deed (Fanfic) - TV Tropes , Reconciliation Worm / Fan Fic - TV Tropes , Like Mother Like Skitter / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, Legacy Undone / Fan Fic - TV Tropes (Please contribute if possible :))

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Feb 17, 2017

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Threadmarks Interlude: Hiro

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Ld1449

Ld1449

To the last, Kill them all

Mar 4, 2017

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#197

Ok, this chapter takes place simultaneously to the previous chapter (The middle of it) the reason we posted the previous chapter first is because we felt it was important to establish Taylor's "recovery" as quickly as possible so as not to 'drag it on' so to speak, since having a non functional protag can wear thin quick. So sorry if this causes a little bit of confusion timeline wise but its the only chapter that will 'step back' the rest keep moving forward post Taylor recovery.

Anyway with that said, hope you enjoy (also forgive the tardiness, had a bit of trouble with my internet today.

Interlude- Hiro Hamada:

Hiro stepped off the bus; the telltale squeaks and squeals of vinyl as his friend walked through the door behind him were familiar and almost comforting.

Baymax waddled out, hopping off of the last step to land on the pavement with a bounce, to stand directly behind him. Hiro yawned as he walked up the block and into the gated community where Fred lived.

He still couldn't get over the fact that Fred lived here. That first time, all of them soaked and cold and hesitant, on an adrenaline high after being chased through the city, still played through his mind like a broken record, and only now was it really starting to sink in that his friend was probably one of the richest people in the state, if not the country.

Fred. Who ate days old Pizza and dressed like he got half his clothes from a salvation army boxes.

Freakin weird.

Anyway, today was a little get together. Heathcliff was doing barbecue, and Fred would not shut up about his butler's culinary skill.

So here he was to see if it was exaggeration...and also because he wasn't going to do something as stupid as turning down free food.

Minutes later, he was pressing the front door intercom of the mansion.

"Yes?" drawled Heathcliff's monotone.

"Hey, Mr. Heathcliff. It's me: Hiro."

"Ah, Master Hamada." The gate clicked and was opened. "I'll be at the door momentarily. Master Frederick and the rest of your friends have already arrived."

Hiro sighed. Late.

Being a fifteen year old boy genius has its benefits and downsides.

One of those downsides was that he couldn't even apply for a driver's license, yet.

Hiro stood at the door, waiting; with the Golden Gate Bridge stretching towards the other side of the bay to his left, his mind wandered as he shoved his hands to his pockets and looked towards the skyline of San Fransokyo.

Or, more specifically, towards the building that served as San Fransokyo General Hospital, where the girl from the portal lay in bed still. That same girl who was dropped into the Null Space with a severed right arm and two bullet holes in her skull, and who, despite her healed wounds, was still recovering.

At first, Hiro had maintained his distance. It was he and Baymax, fully kitted out in their armor, who had delivered that girl and Abigail to emergency services, and given their distinctive heights and body types, Hiro wanted to make sure no one would make the connection between those brave heroes and scrawny Hiro Hamada and his faithful healthcare robot. That was one of the reasons it'd taken a month to go see her after the events at Kreitech, and the other was that it had simply taken a while to find her.

He'd managed, though; there were only so many Jane Does in long term care.

No one knew her. A facial recognition search with Baymax's scans as a baseline was turning up absolutely nothing, and that was with him looking through the UPN, Interpol, and the Russian databases. Every missing persons database in the world had turned up only similarities, never an exact match. The closest was a forty-something woman up in New Hampshire, but even that was only tenuous and twenty years too old, besides.

There weren't any good theories. She could have come from some other country, maybe slipped through the cracks somewhere — it was even likely. But there was a feeling in Hiro's stomach, a niggling doubt.

There was never anything to prove that Null Space couldn't connect to multiple places, multiple realities. In all those infinite possibilities, maybe one society was advanced enough, prosperous enough to have outright beaten them in the technological race and could just open up portals to Null Space whenever they damn well pleased.

Alternate earths, worlds by the same name where one event, one single difference, had irrevocably changed history.

Or she could be from the future? Or the past? (Maybe he'd been watching a little too much Sci-fi with that last one.)

They were only theories, though. Other than that single glimpse he'd gotten, that strange woman standing on the other side of a portal shaped like a doorway, and a girl who didn't, according to all records, exist, there was no proof.

Maybe it was far-fetched to entertain ideas of alternate earths, but he was willing to try anything at this point.

He visited her regularly.

Every time, he felt his chest ache in sympathy at the sight of such a young woman, barely a few years older than him, filled with needles and plugged into so many tubes. Every time, the rhythmic beating of her heart monitor made him feel queasy.

When he showed up the first time, her head was shaven. The long, dark tresses of her hair had been completely shorn away, probably for the sake of surgery, and it was a shame — her hair was one of her nicer features. She looked like she'd taken care of it before...whatever happened.

He visited twice a week, at first, without Baymax, then later he increased it to three times, then four, and then finally every weekday. Hiro tried having a conversation with her, talking on how his day went, although it was really more of a monologue, since she was still out cold. He told her everything, whether it was Wasabi's bumbling during their training, some gross thing Fred did with his socks, or a cool exploit Honey Lemon or Gogo did when they went out to stop some petty criminal or put out a fire. He had a lot to talk about that, them and the group moonlighting as the new 'hero team' in town that the media had dubbed the "Big Hero 6."

He made sure to whisper, at least. Didn't want to get caught by any nurses walking in on the controller of the Big Hero 6's mascot hero boasting in front of a coma patient.

The routine continued for weeks. Months. Her hair was growing back.

Then, she woke up at long last.

She was barely responsive, staring at them eyes so flat and dead that they unnerved him. Baymax explained that, after such a traumatic injury, it was very likely she didn't even remember languages anymore, much less how to communicate in any meaningful way. It was like an infant trapped in a grown person's body.

An infant with a very intense stare.

Hiro's train of thought was broken by the sound of the door opening, and the bored looking butler was standing at the ready. "Master Hamada." Heathcliff greeted before stepping aside. "And Master Baymax. A pleasure."

"Thanks, Mr. Heathcliff," Hiro replied as he walked through the door, Baymax waddling through, still squeaking. Baymax offered his fist, and Heathcliff bumped it, the robot uttering a "balalalala" with a wiggle of fingers in turn before following his master.

Heathcliff opened the secondary door for the wide robot to enter. "So, are Fred and the others out back?"

"Yes, sir." Heathcliff closed the doors and walked in front, escorting the two through Fred's lavish mansion. The decor. The marble statues. The paintings of Renaissance Europe and pre-Union Japan and China. Along with the occasional signed movie poster of some SciFi B-Movie Fred was super into. Hiro could hear the telltale yell of a 'Cannonball!' and he looked out past the mansion to see Fred diving into the water of his large pool.

To his right, Damian Waynes, better known as 'Wasabi,' was at the top of the jumpboard, waiting for Fred to surface from his childlike plunge. He looked to have green and silver trunks.

Laura Rodriguez, or 'Honey Lemon,' was on her tablet humming happily and giggling. Must have been watching some videos on Facepage. Leiko Tanaka, or Gogo Tomago, was sunbathing. Odd, coming from the punk adrenaline junkie. Honey had a yellow and pink-flower one piece to go on her tall and lithe physique while Gogo donned a yellow and black bikini. Hiro made sure not to ogle… Or at least not be caught.

...He was a genius. And a teenage boy. Not a nun.

"Hey Hiro!" Wasabi called out from atop of the diving-board. Hiro waved.

"You never told me it was gonna be a pool party!" Hiro laughed as he sat by Honey Lemon and Gogo, Gogo noticed his presence with a simple "Hey" before going back to dozing, while Honey Lemon jumped to her feet and glomped the boy.

"Heya!" The blonde chirped, Hiro smiled bashfully up at the beaming girl. Then she paled. "Ohmigosh that's right! We forgot to call you last night about it! Oh I'm so sorry!"

"It's fine." Hiro stepped back, bumping into the belly of his giant medcare robot. "I made a detour anyway."

"Hospital again?" Gogo asked as she blew out another bubble of gum. It popped, and she gnashed it back into her mouth. Hiro felt the mood get dampered a he sat down on the lounge chair next to Gogo, who was probably looking at him past her sunglasses as she laid prone. Hiro nodded.

"Yeah… she was awake again. Doctors are saying she's slowly getting minimal movement back."

"Primary function is being restored in patient 'Jane Doe's' toes." Baymax pointed out with a raised hand. "Subject's motor functions, given current rate of recovery along with medical technology available to the patient, are calculated to last approximately eight months, two weeks and five days before subject is capable of speech and full motor control and ready to begin full rehabilitation."

Honey Lemon sat next to the boy, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Well, that's good. At least she's getting better." Hiro heard the Fred's laughter and looked up to see Wasabi dive on in with a whoop.

When Fred turned towards him he smiled, "Heeeeey, man!" The big nosed blonde offered his fist, the two fist bumping. "Heeey, Biggie B. What's hangin', bro?" Fred offered his towards Baymax, who bumped his fist and uttered "balalalalala," complete with his usual finger waggling.

Wasabi's head popped out of the water, shaking his head and swimming in the pool before he spoke, "What's really got me shakin my head is 'Who is she?' ya know?" He put forward, floating on his back in the pool. "I mean...two bullets to the head and tossed into an inescapable dimension. That had to be some serious haterade they had for her. I mean, who survives gunshots to the head?!"

"Honestly, only people I've ever heard of that get shot like that are criminals or people who ticked off the wrong kind of people. You're not meant to survive two shots. Ever." Gogo commented, popping another gum-ball, still looking up but Hiro could feel her eyes on him. "Girl's probably dangerous, Hiro. You really should be careful, motor functions or no motor functions. Don't get too attached to Sleeping Beauty, there."

Hiro opened his mouth to speak when Honey Lemon beat him to it. "Come on. We don't know anything about her! We can't go starting by saying she's a bad person. That's not fair! For all we know she could be very very nice!"

"Look, you guys are seriously overthinking this." Fred chuckled, pulling himself out of the pool and walking over with a swagger and confidence. "I know exactly what happened and why our miss Sleeping Beauty got the headshot treatment, yeah?"

"Oh?" Gogo's voice showed just how very much she believed him.

"This ought to be good…" Wasabi rolled his eyes.

"Yeah. Ya see," Fred had his arms out as he began to narrate, voice lowered as if he was a camp counselor or some cheapskate uncle in the Oregon backwoods telling scary stories by the campfire. "The way I figure it, she's a real big time warlord where she comes from. Like, major big time. Like Hossein Al-Barouk big time! With like… like the ability to turn people into suicide bombers or drones! Take control of them and make them do whatever she wants!"

Now he was just pulling stuff out of his ass. Hiro couldn't help but smile, though.

"And thus, she was eliminated from her place because she was just too dangerous, or was becoming too powerful for the evil Shadow Organization to control, all of this done after she, in her mind, did everything she needed to do to make her world safe by any means necessary, from some unstoppable force of nature that was a threat to all creation in the universe that she had to put down at all costs!"

Fred nodded to himself, utterly convinced. Then he looked down at his nails. He was in need for a clipping. "I betcha that happened."

There was silence between the lot of them. Gogo removed her sunglasses, head moving for the first time as she made direct eye contact with the blond heir.

"How do you function?" Gogo deadpanned.

"Yeah, Fred. That one sounds far fetched, even by your standards!" Wasabi chuckled from where he was still at the pool.

Hiro sighed, ignoring the argument that was now occurring as he looked to Baymax. "Eight months?"

"And three weeks and five days." Baymax nodded. "Yes."

"It's already been nearly five, Baymax...I mean… we have eight more to go?"

"And three weeks and five days."

"Two bullets to the head, Hiro," Honey Lemon reminded, taking a seat beside him. "It's a miracle she's still alive at all." She offered him a sad smile. "Let's give it time, okay?"

He sighed. She was right.

She was definitely right.

But...he just hated not knowing, his curiosity gnawed at him.

Why was she shot? Why did they throw her out of that portal? Where did that portal lead to? Who was the woman in the suit...

And he thought back to Honey Lemon's words as he sat under an umbrella as Heathcliff prepared hamburgers made out of Kobe Beef.

(X)(X)(X)

Next chapter will be on the 18th, hope you enjoyed :)

Stories:

\- Complete: - Reconciliation (Worm AU), A knight in the Dark (Naruto/Souls, Oneshot), Lines (Mass Effect, Oneshot), Like Mother like Skitter, Unfit (Naruto)

\- In progress - Outcry: Worm/Dark Souls (Alt Power), Souls of Heroes (Fate/Souls), Legacy Undone (Naruto), Umbram Mortis (Worm AU), No good deed... (Worm AU), Overwatch shorts, Exodus: (Worm/BH6),

-TV-Tropes pages-

Outcry / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, No Good Deed (Fanfic) - TV Tropes , Reconciliation Worm / Fan Fic - TV Tropes , Like Mother Like Skitter / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, Legacy Undone / Fan Fic - TV Tropes (Please contribute if possible :))

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Mar 4, 2017

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Threadmarks 1.3

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Ld1449

Ld1449

To the last, Kill them all

Mar 18, 2017

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#224

1.3

I needed to go to rehab.

Rehab was a major pain.

I needed to go to rehab.

I saw Nurse Jolyne, a fat young nurse with big cheeks, enter the room with the wheelchair, smiling as bright as usual with her syrupy sweet charm. "Good morning, Taylor!" she chirped, her smile so wide she was almost squinting. "It's time for breakfast!"

I nodded. "Morning." I tried to muster a smile, but I wasn't sure how well it survived when I needed help getting to my feet enough to make it to the wheelchair.

If I had been skinny and lanky before, I look downright skeletal now. I'd been kept alive through simple protein porridge and an IV for… nearly a whole year now, give or take a month or two from what I understand. My once toned and decent musculature I had built up during my villain/Warlord/hero career had atrophied, gone completely down the proverbial drain.. I needed to gain weight again. Both in body fat and in muscle.

Essentially going to rehab and stuffing my face.

The second half of the process wasn't so bad, even with hospital food.

The first half though…

I wasn't a stranger to hard work, to effort. I knew those things like they were old, well-worn friends.

I never realized, however, just how humiliating it was to not even have the power to stand up on your own two feet… to need to call for help just to get to the bathroom. To need help to even...just brush your damn teeth in the morning.

I didn't consider myself a prideful person, but this…

They said I was doing unbelievably well. At this rate, just two more months, they said.

Just two more months… Some days, it felt like they might as well have said two decades.

I felt myself being wheeled down the hall, leaning back and looking down at my stump of an arm. The nurses and doctors had asked me if I wanted a cybernetic prosthetic.

To offer something like that so casually, as if a robotic arm was just… mundane…

I hadn't accepted, of course. Too many unknowns. Too many factors I couldn't account for, yet, to know what the hell this place was. I could ask later, but for now, I was sticking to my left arm before I asked to become more like Defiant than I wanted. Even though I saw other patients and even a nurse or doctor here with a prosthetic limb.

All I'd managed to find out was that this place, wherever it was, whatever Earth it was, was full of very advanced tech.

Had they found a way to mass produce Tinkertech here?

Whatever this world was, it either had found a way to mass produce Tinkertech, or it just had Tinkers for days.

It was also called San Fransokyo, at least the city. It was definitely, geographically speaking, where San Francisco, California was back home. The similarity in the name alone would have tipped me off, if not for the famous golden gate bridge that I could see from my hospital room.

A whole new world.

Alone. Without Dad…

Was he even alive? How many were, now? How did this place escape the damage of the final battle? The destruction, the lives lost…

The number had been...unquantifiable.

I took a deep breath and looked at the ceiling.

"Thinking on something?" asked Jolyne. My train of thought came to a stop and I turned my gaze towards her.

"Oh, well… yeah." I looked off. "Just wondering how I survived back then."

"You mean the gunshots? Or Null Space where you were found?"

I half opened my mouth to correct her — after all everyone knew of the Golden Morning — when I shut it, realizing my mistake a half second before I made it.

"I suppose," I hedged instead.

"Heck if I know, sweetie, but you managed to survive somehow. And it sure stirred up a storm. Physicists and mathematicians are all scrambling over each other to get the chance to explore that place, that Null Space. Did you know the government went off recently to try and launch probes in there?"

"I think they did launch them," I said, remembering. Hiro had been going at it a mile a minute since I first talked to him, apparently trying to cram everything about this world into my head during the hours he spent at my bedside.

Two satellite probes, if I recalled, after the tech had been cannibalized and repurposed into a new doorway. One, the science team had named Jane, the other, Abigail.

I doubted they'd change its name if I called them up and said my name was actually Taylor. Too late to change the good ole Jane Doe.

I suppose I was...lucky. Being in a coma for so long had let the news and the media frenzy basically blow over onto different things now.

My memories were returning. Slowly but surely, like...water trickling back into a sieve, filling it up drop by drop.

The Golden Morning was the first.

Staring at Scion, his face a mask of sorrow, holding himself perfectly still as he awaited the death blow.

He'd looked straight at me.

I didn't think I'd ever forget that image. That gaze.

It would be burned into my mind until the day I died.

Then came others, bit by bit every hour, every minute of every day, until I could assemble the picture in my mind like a giant jigsaw puzzle arranged in perfect order.

I could remember everything.

Useful.

Especially when it came to remembering how to control my insects.

Didn't have alot of control. Not even alot of range. Where before I could direct insects with pin point precision now it was... sloppy.

Even my range was just a few feet, not the city blocks it used to be.

Though both those things were changing day by day. Millimeter by millimeter.

Had Contessa planned this?

She must have.

Most powerful cape in the world, who literally could not fail, barring Scion and the Endbringers.

She planned for this kind of recovery.

Only explanation for why it was going so smoothly.

Now, I just had to find out what path she was following that had this as a consequence to the end result.

We wheeled into the physical therapy center and I almost groaned at the sight of the equipment there. Ballet posts and rails to help me walk. Weights and dumbbells looked too light for a normal person to be a dumbbell.

Except I wasn't normal. I was basically skin and bones, and I was just barely above the threshold for underweight and malnourished, because of the nutrient paste and occasional snacks and shakes Hiro brought me.

"Alright, let's get you walking. Don't be afraid to take your time," Jolyne spoke as she lifted me up in her big arms. For a fat girl, she was strong, or maybe I was just as light as a feather. Anyone was stronger and heavier than me physically, at this point.

Anyway, Jolyne had a cheery disposition about her, though there was no escaping that she was bigger, taller, heavier, and wider than even Piggot had been. Then again, anyone can be cheery when they weren't in charge of Brockton Bay.

Which in this world is called Portsmouth, for some reason. And there were more islands around there instead of an open bay. Could have used those islands when Leviathan dropped by, too.

…

God, that just felt...awkward.

I placed my bony hand on the rails, took several deep breaths, and held on as Jolyne strapped the nearby harness around my waist, hooking it over my shoulders like suspenders. It had a tether attached to the ceiling track that would keep me upright.

That was good.

Because I literally could not get up when I fell down.

Christ, I couldn't remember feeling this helpless and weak since that time Bonesaw put me on an operating table.

I gripped the bar and held on, taking step after step…

Well. Just one. I grunted after step one.

"You're doing good, Taylor. Keep it up!" Jolyne exclaimed from in front of me. She smiled, broad and encouraging, as she held her hands forward like a parent, ready to catch the toddler if they suddenly tripped and face-planted.

I turned and focused on my next step as my arm began to shake from the strain of carrying most of my weight, forcing me to rest it on my shaking knees.

It felt like an eternity before I finally made it to the other side.

I was sweating, every limb felt like it was on fire, I was panting like a winded dog, and I'd barely made twenty feet.

This was goddamn pathetic.

"That was fantastic, Taylor!" Jolyne smiled.

I tried not to glare, really, I did.

"I didn't think you'd make it the whole way!" She continued, oblivious, or choosing to be. "Not this soon!"

She probably said that to all her patients.

"Updating calculations."

I heard a familiar voice behind me.

I turned, and the big, white, squishy Bay-

No, wait… Not Baymax. Different.

Still white, still tall, but harder plastic rather than the inflatable vinyl to which I'd become accustomed. A little skinnier, as well.

That, and I didn't see Hiro.

"What's that?" I found enough breath in me to ask.

"This unit calculated that rate of recovery would necessitate an additional three months, two weeks, and two days before full recovery could be achieved. Given current rate of progress, this unit is updating its estimated recovery time. You now have two months, one week, and three days before full recovery is completed at current rate."

I blinked and turned towards Jolyne. "So uhhh, did I miss something or did this become a thing?"

"Oh yes!" Jolyne waddled over. "This young inventor is now selling numerous of these Baymax 2 MCUs. Quite a few hospitals are ordering some. Especially for physical therapy and elderly patients. We're one of the first to get them, and we have around a dozen here at San Fransokyo. I hear at least every hospital in the city is going to stock some."

Well… I hoped Hiro read the fine print on whatever contract he signed.

"So…" I held onto the bars as Jolyne brought the wheelchair and I all but collapsed into it with a grunt. "Again?" I asked.

"Yep. Gotta build up that muscle memory. Well, first the muscle, then the memory." Jolyne toyed. "I'll go get you a protein shake after you do one more walk in...how does ten minutes sound? That okay by you?"

I nodded. "Vanilla, please. And thank you."

(X)(X)(X)

Little filler, but important regardless, hope you all enjoyed :) Next update will be the 31st

Stories:

\- Complete: - Reconciliation (Worm AU), A knight in the Dark (Naruto/Souls, Oneshot), Lines (Mass Effect, Oneshot), Like Mother like Skitter, Unfit (Naruto)

\- In progress - Outcry: Worm/Dark Souls (Alt Power), Souls of Heroes (Fate/Souls), Legacy Undone (Naruto), Umbram Mortis (Worm AU), No good deed... (Worm AU), Overwatch shorts, Exodus: (Worm/BH6),

-TV-Tropes pages-

Outcry / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, No Good Deed (Fanfic) - TV Tropes , Reconciliation Worm / Fan Fic - TV Tropes , Like Mother Like Skitter / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, Legacy Undone / Fan Fic - TV Tropes (Please contribute if possible :))

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Mar 18, 2017

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To the last, Kill them all

Apr 2, 2017

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#273

I apologize for the delay, but SB kept giving me a 503 error since last night up until about ten minutes ago.

At any rate, here's the weeks update, hope you enjoy :)

(X)(X)(X)

Interlude: Wasabi

"So… she knows our identities."

This statement, delivered with the forced casualness of a child who knew he was about to reveal some very bad news and was trying very hard to downplay its negative implications as much as possible, prompted several reactions from everyone.

Fred did a spit take, spraying much of his cola out of the mouthpiece of his suit, then cried in dismay at the sight of the rest of it trailing down the inside of his lizard costume and into his pants and socks.

Gogo nearly crashed into a wall. She lost her footing for a moment, and when she found her balance again, she ground her wheels against the cement hard enough to leave a clear and defined divot in its surface, then rounded on him with an expression of utter incredulity.

Honey looked confused, tilting her head just so.

Wasabi did a military style, one-eighty about face.

"Say what, now?" he asked, bearing a nervous, twitchy smile. "You..uh...I coulda sworn I heard you say —"

"How does she know who we are?" Gogo asked, stepping forward, the wheels of her feet rising to hover just above her ankles as she placed her hands on her hips. She looked at Hiro as though her eyes could fire laser beams.

"Well…" Hiro looked down. Baymax, in his red armor, stood passively behind him. His cheeks were a bright, cherry red, and he refused to meet anyone's gaze.

"I kinda sorta talked to her while she was recovering...trying to get her to learn to talk again and…" He paused, and actually went so far as to wring his hands. "Kinda told her...stories…"

"What kind of stories?" Gogo stressed, laser-beam-eyes narrowed dangerously.

"Umm...Our...kind of...stories..."

"Dude!" Fred's hands were on the crown of his suit. "Superhero Rule Number One: you do not talk about secret identities. Rule Number Two: you do not talk about secret identities! Rule Number Three if there are any questions about rule one and two: you do not talk about the secret identities!" He began to pace. "Why did you tell her, man! Aren't you the leader?!"

"I didn't like...flat out say it. I just told stories and... she… just figured it out herself. I mean, we did talk a lot about it and I think, well… she connected two and two together and —"

"This is bad. Really, really, really bad," Fred bemoaned.

"Guys, it'll be alright! Let's not jump to conclusions, here!" Honey insisted, running a hand down Fred's back as she leaned over to plead with Gogo.

Meanwhile, Damien 'Wasabi' Wayne was experiencing…

'An event' was a good way to put it.

In his life, everything had a place and a purpose. Things did not overlap, they did not step out of their place, otherwise there would be nothing but a pure, disorganized mess…

He didn't like mess.

His hero persona, similarly, had its place. It was to be kept separate from 'Wasabi,' the college student that specialized in highly advanced photon technology.

They were not meant to overlap. They did not step into each other's place.

Wasabi certainly wasn't the one who went out and stopped bank robberies or high speed car chases.

And Hero Wasabi didn't hand in reports in school.

Things were nice, simple, uncomplicated that way.

Organized…

Free of mess…

But now, that vision was rapidly shattering right before his eyes, crumbling to a messy pile at his feet.

What would any future employers say? What would all the respected science communities say?

What would his mother say!?

He started to hyperventilate.

He could hear her now, calling on the phone, screeching about his risky behavior, demanding he come home, and when he said no, she'd fly out here to supervise.

…

Oh god…

Oh god, why. Oh the humanity!

In the span of ten seconds, Wasabi went from panic, to rage, to fear, to uncertainty, to acceptance, back to panic, and ran through the gamut of emotions several times.

"I can't take it, I can't take the pressure anymore, and —" Wasabi stopped himself as he noticed everyone was looking right at him.

"I was thinking outloud, wasn't I?" he asked with wide eyes, like a deer caught in the headlights.

"Yeah… Caught that," Fred said, deadpan.

"Especially the part about your mom," Hiro put forward.

"Kinda...shouted it at the top of your lungs," Honey Lemon offered.

"Mama's boy," Gogo added.

"But it's fine! Honest!" Hiro explained. "Taylor said she'd keep it a secret!"

"That's what they always — who's Taylor?" Fred caught himself.

"Oh! You know her name?" Honey Lemon spoke up, smile on her face. She was taking this...well.

"Y-Yeah. Her name is Taylor Hebert, apparently. She's very nice and said she'd keep it a secret." Fred let out a long frustrated sigh.

"Hiro, Hiro, Hiro. Look, you're new to the superhero game." He knelt down, hand on Hiro's shoulder. "I mean, you haven't been exposed to the rules and the mindset like I have. But I think, after enough movies and enough of our escapades going out there for peace and justice and radical awesome, you'd think — you'd THINK —" Fred raised his voice. "— that maaaaybe it would be smart to keep your identity under wraps, lock and key?"

"As much as Fred loses brain cells on a daily basis, watching those movies, he has a point," Gogo commented, standing up and walking over to Hiro. "You shouldn't have talked with her about anything we do. Loose lips sink ships, Hiro." There was a noticeable edge in her voice. "What do we do?"

"Huh?" Honey asked.

"Uhhh, isn't it obvious?" Fred brought fingers to his lips, and zipped them. "We gotta shut her up. Make sure she doesn't chirp."

"What!?" Wasabi squeaked. "Kill her!?"

"Of course we're not killing her, moron!" Gogo shouted.

"Nah, man. I ain't crazy!" Fred protested.

Wasabi breathed a sigh of relief.

"We'll just use Hiro's amnesia machine to make her forget about everything."

They stared at him.

Honey took a breath, raising one fist, finger pointed in the air —

"Moving on!" Gogo loudly demanded before turning to Hiro with her accusatory glare.

"Oh, come on, she said she was going to keep it a secret!" Hiro spoke out, eyes wide. "I mean, what can she do with our identities?"

"Gee, I don't know." Gogo dryly rolled her eyes. "Because the fact she came from a portal and has no money to her name, no ID outside of the name she gave you, and nothing to lose, you'd think she'd sell this tidbit of information to the San Fransokyo Gazette for a whole money bin. Or blackmail Fred for a fortune and a half."

"I wouldn't mind a money bin," Fred mused. "Would be cool swimming in it. Oh! Or making a wave pool of money..."

"Aren't you, like...filthy stinkin' rich?" Wasabi asked with a quirked eyebrow.

"No reason to get technical about it," Fred answered, crossing his arms.

"Why do I bother?"

"Guys, I'm with Hiro, here." Honey walked over to the group. "If this girl promised, then it's a promise! And we aren't going to 'shut her up'. I mean, how would we even do that and why would she ruin a good thing? She's been watching the news for goodness knows how long while cooped up in the bed, so she knows how much good we do! Crime rate's down ten percent a from a year ago when we first started!" She exclaimed brightly.

Wasabi took a breath. He knew Honey Lemon could be bit of a ditz while being sweet enough to give someone diabetes, and maybe that made her a little bit naive, but he really hoped her and Hiro's optimism panned out in this instance.

He really, really did.

Just then, the police sirens sounded out just a few blocks away, and they could see the flash of red-and-blue lights on the sides of the buildings. Everyone stopped bickering and turned towards Baymax.

"My scanners indicate a situation on: 8th Avenue and Liberty Street." Baymax reported.

"Isn't that where the Concert Hall is?" Honey Lemon spoke out.

"I think so. Let's get going, then!" Hiro swung himself up onto Baymax's back in a fluid, practiced motion, and off they flew into the night.

Stories:

\- Complete: - Reconciliation (Worm AU), A knight in the Dark (Naruto/Souls, Oneshot), Lines (Mass Effect, Oneshot), Like Mother like Skitter, Unfit (Naruto)

\- In progress - Outcry: Worm/Dark Souls (Alt Power), Souls of Heroes (Fate/Souls), Legacy Undone (Naruto), Umbram Mortis (Worm AU), No good deed... (Worm AU), Overwatch shorts, Exodus: (Worm/BH6),

-TV-Tropes pages-

Outcry / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, No Good Deed (Fanfic) - TV Tropes , Reconciliation Worm / Fan Fic - TV Tropes , Like Mother Like Skitter / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, Legacy Undone / Fan Fic - TV Tropes (Please contribute if possible :))

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Apr 2, 2017

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To the last, Kill them all

Apr 21, 2017

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#311

1.4

"Three...two...and...there!" I took a step forward, standing up in between the racks, hands gripping the bars. I took deep breaths and looked at Jolyne, who clapped her hands.

"There we go!" She almost looked like she wanted to start jumping for joy as she clapped her hands, walking over to me. She wrapped one arm around my waist and gripped my bicep with the other, holding me up before helping me walk over to the wheelchair and setting me down on it. "You're making fantastic recovery time here, Taylor!"

"Yeah...thanks…" I breathed. Today was the first day I'd done it without the harness, and honestly, it was a boost to my confidence I sorely needed. The thought that I could walk on my own was… honestly beautiful.

They said I was doing great, but I doubted that. The treatment and rehab care here had things that could pass as Tinker Tech back home. With that kind of technology, I should have been out of here, already!

The only upside to the fact that I was stuck in this hospital was that it gave me a lot of time to catch up on my reading.

Specifically, history. This Earth had a history that was largely identical to what I could remember from mine. The point of divergence, as far as I could tell, was the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

That was the point of the divergence, judging from what I gathered in numerous history articles.

From there onwards, the United States' technology evolved fast, to the point that it practically blitzed past the heavy reliance on the fossil fuels that Earth Bet and Aleph used in under three decades. With a speed that would make a historian's head spin, it was pushed aside in favor of clean energy like wind, solar, and hydro-electric.

This made the United States something of an aloof superpower come the early to mid 1900s. They became so colossal that Europe and its various nations felt insanely threatened by their success. As a result, the European Union had been born decades before their creation in my Earth.

Then, as the US sought to expand their interests worldwide and found themselves butting heads against the European Union, they turned eastward, for Asia.

Japan had been the obvious target at the time, having just won a war with Russia, a declining but still major player back in the early 1900s. The US started fostering good relations with them, outbidding and offering more lucrative opportunities and deals than the European Union could, at the time.

They'd been allies and close friends ever since, to the point that Japanese relief workers who helped repair it in the aftermath of the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 had been offered full US citizenship as a thanks for their service.

So many had stayed that they'd renamed the city in their honor.

Which is why this place was named San Fransokyo, not San Francisco. It was why it had signs written in English with Japanese translations on every street corner and vice versa.

Eventually, the Japanese Empire and the United States allied to form the Union of Pacific Nations.

That's what I'd read so far anyway.

Jolyne pushed me over to the workout bench, where some light weights were at, and I sat down and she handed one to me. Five pound dumbbell, but it felt like a fourty pounder to me.

I was still weak, but over the last month, I had managed to put on more muscle mass in my legs and arms, so I wasn't a skeleton anymore, and due to my reinvigorated appetite, I was putting on even more weight; I was at a point that could probably pass for healthy. Maybe. For a Merchant, maybe.

Well… I'd get the muscle and meat back on me, eventually. I had the time for that, now.

I had the time for it…

With my one arm, I took the thing and began to do some curls. Jolyne turned on the volume on the TV that was in the room and the news was playing.

'... and onto other news, the team of vigilante heroes, the Big Hero Six, were spotted again last night, aiding in stopping the pursuit of a fleeing suspect-

I looked up as the video clip began to play.

First was Baymax, the big fluff bot now armored like a behemoth, flying around with a purple limpet on his back.

He stopped a speeding car with an absurd degree of gentleness for a Brute. Slowing it down enough for the pink-wearing superheroine to toss some spiderweb-like gunk onto the wheels and a pink glob of adhesive onto the doors and windows.

Then, as the cops were rounding the corner, sirens blaring, Big Red took Lady Pink, who was waving at the cellphone camera, and flew off into the sky.

"You know, every time I hear about those guys, it makes me smile," Jolyne commented. "They're really doing a lot of good things

Hmm. I nodded. "You hear about them all the time." 'And get regular visits.' I added mentally. "Crime rate's gone down thanks to them, I hear."

"Oh yes!" Jolyne perked up. "A lot of the gang members got all wrapped up and shipped off to Granite Bay Prison up the coast. They've been a big help!"

A big help, huh. Heroes doing things and being showered with praise.

Was this how it was?

How it started? Was this the 'Golden Age' I'd heard stories about, before my world went to hell?

Was this this world's version of the Triumvirate? Cauldron? People who started off doing good, only to get dragged further and further into the mud pit?

Hiro seemed like… a good person. There weren't alot of people I could say were the same.

But what about the others? Would he be the 'Legend' of their group, well meaning but ultimately ignorant of how far his teammates would go? Or did go?

Apparently, my mood was showing on my face. "Something wrong, Tay?" Jolyne asked

I shook my head. "Just wondering what kind of people they are. Things aren't so cut and dry."

She shrugged and smiled. "Oh, who knows? Lots of people speculate what they're like on the forums and image boards." The pleasantly plump woman answered. "People say Big Hero, the red one, is the leader, but I don't buy it. Some people say Tracer-Girl, the yellow and black one, is the Leader by example."

Not quite. The leader was the kid clinging to the back of the robot like it was an overgrown plush toy.

I yawned, too slow to fully cover my mouth as my lone arm struggled with the dumbbell.

I set it down as soon as the yawn subsided, taking a breath and looking to Jolyne. "Think it's time to go."

She looked at her cellphone clock, nodding. "Yup. Just about," she answered, marching over to the wheelchair.

"I'd like to walk, please," I said.

Jolyne looked at me. "You sure hun?"

I nod. "You said I've been doing well… time to prove it."

"Sweetheart, this isn't a race. You can take as much time as you need."

"I have," I answered...demanded, staring at Jolyne in the same way I'd learned to look at so many others in my life that needed to be...convinced.

I tried to pretend I didn't notice her shiver just a bit.

I also tried to pretend it bothered me more than it did, but I was bothered much more by how unbothered I was.

She recovered quickly, though, smiling. "Well… I suppose it wouldn't hurt to try." Jolyne pondered. "You got me for a nice cushion to lean back on! But just in case, B-six-two."

With a soft glow of light from its chest and then its eyes, the plastic robot turned on, looking to us and stepping off of its power cradle, walking towards us with a stride that was more stable and less of a waddle than Hiro's Baymax.

"This unit is ready to serve in any capacity."

"Well, B-six, we're gonna try to walk to the room now, so if you're gonna help grab the chair and bring it up behind us, and if our patient is gonna fall, you help me catch her, ok?"

"Understood, Nurse Jolyne."

As the robot obediently moved to the chair, I took a deep breath… and pushed myself to my feet.

(X)

It should have been a short walk. Down a hallway, up an elevator, across another hallway, and there was the room.

All in all, less than two hundred steps. It should have taken less than five minutes.

It took me almost twenty. And as I lay in the bed, exhausted, able to do nothing but breathe heavily, trying to catch my breath, Jolyne's words of praise felt hollow.

I had to walk again...I had to be myself again and get out of he —

I opened my eyes, staring up at the ceiling.

Get out…

To go...where, exactly?

I have no home, here. Not even a medical bill to pay. Free healthcare. But I have nowhere to go… No income. No Job. Not even a freaking ID.

All I had to my name were the two bullets Contessa put in my skull to...weaken my passenger.

Even my powers felt alien. Granted, I felt like I was back at the level of strength I had when I'd just started, power wise but I was no warlord Skitter, or Weaver, but feeling such a drop off in both range and dexterity, along with muscle atrophy, only helped to add onto my current state of feeling like a stranger in my own body..

I literally had nothing at the moment.

The only evidence Taylor Hebert ever existed in this place could basically be summed up in these crumpled sheets and the reports Jolyne filled out every day about our sessions.

It was a...disquieting thought.

…

...

What do I do?

I lied in bed for a while, trying to think of a plan, when I felt someone move towards my door through my bugs' senses.

The silhouette seemed familiar, and I tried to pull the person's identity through my memories.

The door opened, and there was a girl, dark hair, streak of pink running through it in a way that reminded me of Aisha, though that was about where the similarities ended. There was no smirk or grin, no joke hanging off the tip of her tongue, and she was asian where Aisha was black.

She was actually glaring at me, arms crossed and eyes narrowed.

There were only a few people who knew I was here at all. That narrowed down my list of suspects, especially since I doubted Contessa would...send anyone. Cauldron's secret weapon wouldn't have had a need for it.

The asian girl closed the door. She had a simple white blouse, leather jacket, yoga pants under a black skirt and converse. She crossed her arms and leaned against the door

"Look here, Taylor." She spat it out my name like it was a curse. "Let's talk."

She was trying to be intimidating. Given the lean muscle and my current inability to properly move, she would have been had I been anyone else.

I'd faced too much more than her for it to work, though. I had to hold back a smirk and remained stoic. So I simply blinked.

Ahh. That's who she was. I remembered her now. She came here with Hiro sometimes, back when I couldn't move or speak.

"I don't know what you're planning, but I promise you, you try to hurt Hiro, or any of my friends, and those bullet holes they put in your skull will seem like a mercy compared to what I'm gonna do to you." Tracer Girl snarled, eyes narrowed at me.

I almost laughed.

"And I know what those things mean. It means that you were damn dangerous. Hiro thinks you're ok. He's a good kid, but he's naive. Innocent. I won't let you take advantage of that." She growled. "Stay away from Hiro."

I looked at her, stared into her eyes.

She meant every word.

It made me smile a bit.

I heard her snarl, watched her lip curl with a sneer. Then, there was a swivel of the door-knob, someone trying to get in.

"Oh. I'm sorry," a nurse said as the door bumped into her. She was bringing in my evening meal.

"No problem. I was just saying goodbye." Tracer Girl mumbled to her before slipping out, tossing me a glare over her shoulder before she closed the door.

"Didn't mean to interrupt your friend." The nurse apologized.

"It's ok. She had to run, anyway," I answered. I turned my head towards the window and began to think.

She was looking out for her friends. Or trying to. And for good reason, as I gave it more thought. I was a no one. A nobody that they knew nothing about and who's motives were completely unknown.

Even so, there were far more important things on my mind than a girl who was trying to be intimidating.

… Maybe I shouldn't underestimate her, on second thought.

After all; The one time I really felt people were going after my friends, I ended up killing my childhood hero. A woman who could go toe to toe with an Endbringer.

I had no intention of surviving the end of all worlds just to end up being this girl's 'Alexandria.'

(X)

It was a few days later, as I was watching the news, that I found something interesting.

A small wrinkle in this otherwise utopian image I'd seen so far.

It was a man, one that was walking out of a court house. He seemed Asian, with sharp, narrow eyes, black hair, and a pointed nose. The bottom caption read:

PROMINENT CEO ARTHUR CHENG FOUND NOT GUILTY FOR CORRUPTION

"Mr. Cheng, how do you feel about the not guilty verdict?"

"Mr. Cheng, what do you have to say to the allegations of witness intimidation or jury tampering, sir?"

"Mr. Cheng —"

The man had a smirk on his face.

He reminded me of Coil.

That same air. The same self assured confidence of a man who knew he was going to win, regardless of the outcome.

"I find it relieving. To know our fair justice system came out with the right verdict is all good by me, Mr. Smith. I can't wait to return to the arms of my wife and two daughters." More shouts of 'MR. CHENG' came out.

"What do you have to say of your opponent's' claims of your alleged ties to the Triads and the funds from Cheng Foods?"

I listened to him answer every question as if he'd rehearsed it.

…

I realized, with a start… that I was smirking

It was like a bucket of cold water over my head, the… amusement I felt at the… prospect...

I looked to myself, my atrophied legs and physique, then to my arm, slowly shaking my head as I eyed the stump.

Even now… I probably could...

Put it out of your mind. I told myself, leaning back on the pillow and changing the channel. Put it out of your mind.

The sound of a creaking door made me turn down the volume of some bickering talking heads and I turned towards the source.

"Oh! Were you napping, Tay?" asked a brunette woman in her mid thirties. I recognized her.

Cassandra.

Aunt Cass.

"No, you're fine." I smiled, or tried to.

I must have done a half decent job, because she smiled back. "I hope your day is going well Tay."

I nodded, then, realized I should probably be a bit more talkative.

"That's good. Anyways, I hear you're almost done with rehab. That big girl? Jolyne? She's been singing your praises in the hallways."

"I-I see…" I said, unsure what to say. "Maybe I should thank her, then." Or tell her to stop. No one needed to know how weak or healthy I actually was.

"Anyways, Taylor." She sat down, leaning forward, staring straight at me. "You don't really have a place to stay, right? Nowhere to go after you get out of here?"

I raised an eyebrow.

"No…" I admitted slowly. "No real memory of home. And given how I showed up with a pair bullet holes in my head, I'm not sure I'd want to go back." I lied. The lie came easily. Even if I could have returned to Earth Bet, even if it wasn't a blasted, charred wasteland, even if I wasn't the single most hated creature across the multitude of universes, I wasn't sure if I ever… ever wanted to go back.

Cass remained silent and took a deep breath. "Well, Hiro has been going in and out of the house more often and crashing at his friend's house for school and work," Aunt Cass said nostalgically. "Call me a crazy mother hen and all, but there's room in my home."

I felt an eyebrow hiking up to my hairline.

…

W-was she serious?

"Uhhh… Mrs. —"

"Well, after everything you've been through, I can't let a girl like you go out there and fend for yourself. Everyone needs some help every now and then. Nothing wrong with that, right? It'll be easier for you to get back on your feet, this way." She smiled at me.

Already my eyes were searching, looking for the ulterior motive, the angle.

I wondered what that probably said about me.

"I… can't pay you..." I offered lamely.

She shrugged, smiling. "I kinda knew that Tay."

"I… W-Would I work for you?" I asked, still not sure what she could ever hope to get out of it. Recovering or not, I was still… crippled in every sense of the word.

"If you'd like to, then sure. I could always use the help."

"I don't want to be trouble."

"Oh you wouldn't cause any trouble." She chuckled. "Also." She leaned in and whispered. "I think Hiro may have a crush on you. Don't tell him I said that, okay? He's really fascinated by you!" Cass let out a soft laugh, probably at the fact her nephew was smitten or my reaction.

I raised an eyebrow, biting down the sarcasm at the tip of my tongue.

The girl with one arm, the mess of hair, the bullet scars on her forehead, and the litany of other scars across her body was not crush material at all.

"I...I see. That's... new," I responded as politely as I could. I could feel the awkwardness in my smile. "Well, in any case… I...I would be happy to work for you."

Cass beamed at me like she was the one that had been offered a job and a place to stay.

(X)(X)(X)

We're running aprox 3-4 days late since the whole "Down for april fools" crash thing threw off the calendar, but updates will resume at their usual pace. Enjoy :D

Also, while some might say Cass' bit at the end is a little abrupt, Taylor's recovery has run its course and its time to move on from that, so next chapter will see a Taylor that's about 75% recovered and is at least mobile See you all on the 5th :)

(Also, who else is excited for DOW: 3)

Stories:

\- Complete: - Reconciliation (Worm AU), A knight in the Dark (Naruto/Souls, Oneshot), Lines (Mass Effect, Oneshot), Like Mother like Skitter, Unfit (Naruto)

\- In progress - Outcry: Worm/Dark Souls (Alt Power), Souls of Heroes (Fate/Souls), Legacy Undone (Naruto), Umbram Mortis (Worm AU), No good deed... (Worm AU), Overwatch shorts, Exodus: (Worm/BH6),

-TV-Tropes pages-

Outcry / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, No Good Deed (Fanfic) - TV Tropes , Reconciliation Worm / Fan Fic - TV Tropes , Like Mother Like Skitter / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, Legacy Undone / Fan Fic - TV Tropes (Please contribute if possible :))

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May 5, 2017

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#399

Arc 1: End

I stirred in my bed, and I knew almost instinctively that I'd woken up before my alarm. I didn't even need to look to identify the familiar weight pressing down on my ribs.

It was my impromptu roommate.

A big, fat, Japanese Bobtail cat was purring and making itself at home on my chest, staring at me with its yellow-green eyes. It pawed at my chin.

I smiled just a bit and raised my remaining arm to pet the fat, lazy cat, scratching his ears.

"You haven't been fed yet, have ya?" I asked knowingly. Usually, Hiro was the one who fed the cat when he was around but there were days he forgot, and since Hiro would just stay asleep and Cass was too busy, my feline companion had learned rather quickly who it could get food off of when it wanted it.

Mochi. I had no idea what it meant, except a vague idea that it was Japanese and probably a pun.

I looked at the clock. 5:37.

Not much earlier than my 6:00 AM alarm. Just about ready to open shop, too. I stood up, dislodging Mochi, and I got out of bed.

First things first, I reached for the prosthetic arm charging on a stand by my bedside table and pulled it free of its charging station.

I put the arm on, feeling the strange sensation of sensors finding and connecting to my nerves, hearing the whirs and clicks of the strange joints. I turned, glancing out the window to the first rays of sunlight turning the sky a slate grey color.

I could already hear Cass downstairs; she filled this place to the brim with pastries and Asiatic foods by the truckload before 6:00 AM opening. I couldn't cook half the menu here. There were pre-made Bento, Pocky, cream cakes, doughnuts, endless supplies of coffee, and that's not even going into the the desserts.

I had nowhere else to go, nothing to my name, nothing else I could do. Hiro had seemed happy with my decision, same with Cass. The kid even let me have his old room, considering that he was practically moving out to live in his own college dorm, now that he was putting in more hours in the robotic lab there than he was here half the time anyway.

I reached for the door-knob with my prosthetic, deciding to get in as much practice with the faux muscles and circuitry as I could. The limb was a lightweight metal, with a surprising degree of strength, though there was some minor lag because the motors and servos didn't have quite the speed and dexterity of real fingers.

Even so, it was better than going around with just one arm.

Cass and Hiro had been with me for the fittings and medical procedures

Complete strangers… sitting for hours on end, days at a time to help me get a prosthetic limb.

They deserved far more than simple gratitude. Even so, that was still all I could give at this juncture.

As such, I tried to work as hard as I could for Cass. The store was… different. Not what I was used to. I didn't deal well with people. With crowds. I tried to smile, tried to sound pleasant and happy like that nurse, Jolyne, did.

Wasn't sure if I was any good at it.

Probably not.

It wasn't that I was depressed or sad… at least… I don't think I am. I wasn't melancholic.

I was just… lethargic. I guessed that would be a word for it. It felt strange…

After everything that happened… slowing down… felt alien to me.

Hiro and Baymax came by virtually every other day and always on the weekends or holidays. The ride here wasn't exactly a road trip. His friends showed up too sometimes, though one was notably absent after one trip.

The one they called 'Gogo'. Tracer Girl, in other words.

She wasn't dead, as far as I knew.

She'd apparently underestimated Cass' kindness and altruism. So did I. I'll admit, I found her flabbergasted face more than a little funny when she saw me and heard I'd be working and living here.

It privately made me laugh.

I put on my robe and walked down the hallway, turned the corner, and there before me was a shambling zombie with sunken eyes and wild, frayed hair, wearing flour stains and a rumpled apron.

The first couple of days spooked me; now, it was all routine.

"Tired…" She hissed. "No...more...baking…"

"You're gonna have to do it again tomorrow," I drawled.

She groaned. "Coooooffeeeeeee…"

"Sure."

"Wiiiiiith suuuuuugaaaaaar… "

I patted Cass on the shoulder as I walked past.

Mochi the cat was already down the stairs, meowing in disgruntled impatience. For a fat cat, he certainly was fast when he had a goal in mind. I got down to the kitchen and dug out the cat food as Mochi meowed loudly. He wound around me, walking figure eights about my ankles as I poured the scoops into his bowl, and barely a second after I'd finished filling it up, he pounced on it and went to town. I changed his water, then put a pot of coffee on, before walking over to the fridge and starting my own breakfast.

As the food cooked, I started to get the shop ready, setting the tables and chairs with both arms. When that was taken care of, I ate my nearly burnt breakfast before I flipped the sign from CLOSED to OPEN.

I still wasn't sure about exactly how 'convenient' it was to live in an apartment just above your workplace. The travel was nonexistent, sure, but to have people knowing where you lived felt… exposed… careless… dangerous.

Either way, those weren't thoughts I needed to entertain.

Before long, Cass came down, and the shop was officially open.

The 6:35 AM jogger showed up right on the dot, smiling and asking for his usual cup to end his jog and head home. Familiar, worn out faces passed through the door, smiling at Cass, who smiled back, smiling at me, who tried to return the courtesy. A steady stream as the morning hours peaked.

"Hey, Ms. Hamada. Muffins smell good, this morning."

"So they don't smell good every morning, Chris?" she answered with an easy smile that I honestly could feel envious of.

I worked the register more than the tables. It didn't take a genius to realize I wasn't the most… personable person. Something in my eyes. Something that told people I was sizing them up… measuring them like I always used to.

It set them on edge… and it wasn't an instinct I was sure I wanted to lose.

I looked out the window towards the neighborhood.

This wasn't my old home. This place felt peaceful… felt… like something Earth Bet lost a long time ago.

It felt like it wouldn't last. Like the other shoe was just waiting to drop...

There was nothing to tell me that. No Parahumans… No Endbringers or Cauldron. Certainly no Scion.

Just me. Just me and my little bugs, watching in and around the store..

As the hours rolled by and the morning rush died into the work-hours… a truck pulled up.

A familiar one.

Just outside the store, at the intersection stop light.

One big truck with the same drivers. Every week… like clockwork

There was nothing extraordinary about it. Nothing unusual…

Except that the driver and passenger were both carrying guns. And the back of their truck didn't carry food, even though it said 'Chang's foods' along the side.

Sometimes they would drop by. Walk in to Cass' store, order coffee.

I gave it to them whenever they did without so much as a cross look.

Just little old me. Little old me with my bugs that could still see and hear everything.

A woman came in, her son alongside her, wearing a red shirt with the Baymax's armored face plastered all over the front of it.

I took their orders, trying to improve my smile.

Arc 1: Colonization End.

Next.

Arc 2: Jubilation.

(X)(X)(X)(X)

A quiet little chapter to cap off the first arc of the story :) Short I know, but I'm very pleased with the next three chapters, which are much longer and far more 'meaty' than this one in events and character interaction.

Hope you enjoyed :)

Last edited: Aug 7, 2019

Stories:

\- Complete: - Reconciliation (Worm AU), A knight in the Dark (Naruto/Souls, Oneshot), Lines (Mass Effect, Oneshot), Like Mother like Skitter, Unfit (Naruto)

\- In progress - Outcry: Worm/Dark Souls (Alt Power), Souls of Heroes (Fate/Souls), Legacy Undone (Naruto), Umbram Mortis (Worm AU), No good deed... (Worm AU), Overwatch shorts, Exodus: (Worm/BH6),

-TV-Tropes pages-

Outcry / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, No Good Deed (Fanfic) - TV Tropes , Reconciliation Worm / Fan Fic - TV Tropes , Like Mother Like Skitter / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, Legacy Undone / Fan Fic - TV Tropes (Please contribute if possible :))

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#443

JUBILATION

2.1

The days rolled by.

One… after the next after the next.

I fell into a routine. And every day, I had to remind myself that this was what it should be. That this was what normalcy looked like. This was what it was like to be an ordinary human being, without dragon-men to fight, or megalomaniacal psychopaths to dethrone, or eldritch abominations to drive off.

It just didn't feel normal to me.

But I tried. With a shaking hand and cold dread in my stomach, I tried.

Cass handed me my check, closed the store at four, and I moved three blocks down to deposit it before returning, unsure of what to spend it on or what to save it up for.

I saved the world. Where could you even go from there?

I walked in through the back door, as I always did, now. Cass was putting away the food that wasn't sold or throwing it out, as needed.

"Hey, Taylor," Cass called out. "Hiro came over while you were out." She smiled. "He said he wanted to talk to you about something."

I raised an eyebrow. "Did he say what about?"

She shrugged. "Not sure, but knowing Hiro, it's some project or other he's got on his mind and he needs you to stand around and do something. Did it with me and Tadashi all the time."

I felt my nerves light up with a strange, queasy anxiety.

I'd been under the scrutiny of Tinker 'projects' in the past, and I didn't like very many of them.

I had to remind myself that was over. Done. This world didn't even have… passengers. Even if Hiro was a true Tinker, he wasn't going to hurt me.

I had to remind myself of this with every step I took up the stairs.

Mochi, the fat cat, sat at the top like an oversized rug, making me step over him to get up to the last step.

I remembered. Dad was allergic to cats.

Shame Dad was allergic to cats, too…

I opened the door to Hiro's room, forgetting to knock in my preoccupation.

Hiro started from where he sat on the bed, looking at his phone.

Baymax waved from his place at the charging station by the wall.

"Greetings."

"Oh, hi, Taylor!" He smiled, looking up at me. "So… how was work?"

"Fine." My answer was so clipped I felt myself inwardly cringe. "Little slow," I elaborated. I was never good at small talk.

"Something wrong? Cass said you needed to speak to me."

Suddenly, he seemed rather nervous, and his smile edged into awkward.

"Oh, it's no big deal, just noticed that you've been kinda… I don't know, cooped up in here. You just work and stay here. Not that I, ah… blame you or anything with the, uh… you know. Circumstances. But… ya gotta get out of here and do something…" He shrugged, trailing off, looking everywhere but me before finding my eyes again. "So I was thinking, well… We could go out? I know of this really cool arcade-slash-pizza place downtown. Wanna come?"

My first reflex was to say no.

I wasn't a people person. And I wasn't fun to be around in a setting like an 'arcade.'

Very likely the less he interacted with me, the better.

Baymax raised a single finger. "First dates are a natural, healthy part of a growing adolescent's —"

The horror on Hiro's face was as much hilarious as it was mildly insulting.

Heh. Date me. The transdimensional former warlord with one arm who hid her bullet scars with a bandana over her forehead…

I'd have to come up with a snappier, quicker one-liner to describe myself, at some point. That one felt like you could run out of breath trying to say it all at once.

Through Hiro's shouted protests and hasty clarifications, he made it abundantly clear that this was a 'group' outing.

Me, him, Baymax, and his… teammates.

"I don't…" I tried to find the right words. "— play hero…" I paused, scratching at my forehead, and hoped he'd take the hint.

He seemed somewhat oblivious, though not entirely so. "Oh… No, no — not. I mean… if you wanted, but no — this isn't a euphemism for that, it's actually going to get pizza."

Ahh.

Then he shifted his eyes away.

My memories of the know it all and the others had returned enough for me to know when someone was… holding back. "And?"

Under my stare, he seemed to resign himself. "Aaaand… to… kinda sorta-"

"You told them about me knowing your identity..." I concluded.

"Yeeeaaaah…" He rubbed the back of his head. "So, I figured that, well… if you came along we could, like… talk it out and stuff. Gogo, Fred, and Wasabi are kinda nervous about it."

I should have expected this.

Correction. I had expected this. But after a few days of not hearing anything and a few days turning into nearly two weeks, I figured Hiro was just tracking me with some tinkertech spy cam or something.

Did he really wait this long to confront me about the whole identity thing?

If he was this laid back about an emergency, I had to wonder if he really knew how far in over his head he was getting.

"I'll come with you."

The answer was blurted out of my mouth before I could stop it. Hiro looked back at me with wide eyes, a smile beginning to form over his face.

"Y-You will?" he asked. I looked to the side.

I nodded. "Yeah." They were… kids. My age, but still, just kids that didn't know the first thing about what they were getting themselves into.

They would get themselves hurt.

I wasn't sure… what, exactly, I was planning to do, yet, what I was going to say. If I was going to say anything. But I couldn't just… sit on my hands, waiting for them to bite off more than they could chew.

If my rather… apathetic manner was off putting, Hiro didn't show it, smiling from ear to ear.

"Great, you're gonna love the pizza. Me and Baymax'll wait for ya downstairs whenever you're ready!"

I tried to smile. I really did. Maybe I succeeded at least a little bit, because his smile didn't diminish as he left, Baymax waddling off behind him with little rubbery squeaks.

I looked at my clothes, wondering for a moment what I could wear that at least looked decent enough. My relatively brief time out of the hospital and my limited funds didn't give me a great deal of options, but, looking through the drawers, which, I assumed, belonged once upon a time to Hiro's late brother, Tadashi, I was able to put together something I didn't have to be ashamed about….and that didn't clash with the necessary headwear to cover up my scars.

Call me vain or stupid. But I didn't like them. Didn't like the reminder, didn't like to see it in the mirror or for others to see it in passing. As I took a quick shower, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and it made me think of Hiro and this whole… Big Hero Six thing he'd started all over again.

He's the same age I was when I first went out...

The thought came unbidden, a bucket of cold water that sent ice crawling down my spine before I shook my head.

No.

No.

This world was… different. There was no Protectorate, there was no Cauldron, no Endbringers, no Entities… No Scion.

Just because he started this didn't mean it'd turn out the same as me. Besides, he started even earlier than I did.

Already, he had a much better reputation than I could have ever hoped for.

I finished dressing myself, adjusting the bandanna in the mirror to make sure it was centered on my forehead at least, before stepping out the door and marching down the stairs.

(X)

We sat on a trolley on our way to the wharf, the equivalent to Brockton Bay's Boardwalk. From what I gathered, it was an old fishing port, once upon a time, before it gradually modernized into a melting pot of restaurants, from pizza to seafood. Hiro sat by my side, and Baymax stood in the middle, too big for the seats, along with having legs too stubby to work them. I wondered, not for the first time, how advanced this place was for a real robot like Baymax to not even get a sidelong glance.

I looked at Hiro, who was busy fiddling with his phone, but… I wanted to know what I was getting into. "So…" I ventured. "What are they like? Your friends."

He looked up, seemingly puzzled for a moment, before his mind snapped back into place. "Oh, well. Wasabi is a good guy. Major worry wort though, but he's really got a head for plasma tech. He's been experimenting on plasma cutlery and working on getting it patented." Hiro looked back up at me. "Honey Lemon, I think you'll get along great with. Then again, she gets along great with everyone. Super sweet."

"With a name like Honey Lemon?" I smiled.

"Heh. Kinda obvious, yeah?" He laughed.

"Heh." I let out an awkward laugh. "I guess so. Like… they have normal names. Right? Those two and Gogo Tamago?"

"Oh yeah, of course." Hiro waved it off. "Honey Lemon's real name is Laura Rodriguez, Wasabi's is Damien Waynes, and Gogo's is Leiko Tanaka. And then, there's Fred Miller." An awkward smile curled at his lips. A kind of embarrassed fondness, if I read it right.

"He doesn't have a nickname?" I asked. It was obvious that this Fred Miller was 'Fredzilla' amongst the Big Hero 6. He sure did act eccentric when in costume.

"Nah, just Fred. Also, don't be surprised if he acts smart. He…kind of isn't. But he's a good guy! Just... "

"Just?"

"He doesn't really care for appearances, or what people think. You know." He shrugged, smiling. "Free spirit. Major comic buff. Like, he has a massive shrine dedicated to them."

"A shrine?"

"A shrine." Again, the awkward looking grin. Either it was true, or there was more he was letting on. Now, I was intrigued.

Free spirit. Comic nerd. Got it. "Right. And Leiko is Gogo... " I nodded, marking the name to the face. Aka Tracer Girl.

The trolley came to a stop, the driver sounding out the wharf as our destination. We stood up and got out, me and Hiro first, followed by Baymax, who squished his way through the door. Then, he came out with an audible plop, before waddling by our side.

I looked around and saw countless people everywhere. It looked like a good mix of Caucasian and Asian dominating the meandering crowds. I could point out a few other ethnicities, but they were few and far between. The smell of the sea, the smell of freshly caught fish and various other foods being cooked, hung over the place like a blanket, soft and warm and welcoming.

This was far better than the Boardwalk.

"Pizza place is over here." Hiro led the way, with me following through the crowds. Everyone seemed so at peace, here. No looming specter of the Endbringers. No failing economy.

I wondered, instinctively, how long it would last.

Making our way through the streets, I found myself stepping behind Baymax. His massive girth overshadowed me and served as something like a shield. Along with Hiro slightly ahead and to the left of him, people stepped out of their way, allowing me to walk without being touched, for which I felt grateful, to be honest.

I wasn't sure why, what it was, this...aversion to people I'd developed. But it was there, and I didn't know if it'd go away anytime soon. It was why I liked handling the register in Cass' shop, rather than waiting on tables. I was separated by a counter and only got cash and handed stuff out, rather than asking for orders and all that.

When we made it to the pizza-slash-arcade place, it wasn't 'full to bursting,' but it wasn't empty, either. It was still early, so I suspected that soon enough, it would be jam packed with people and keep filling up as the night wore on.

"The guys are already here, too, and they should be…" Hiro drawled out as his finger scanned the crowd.

"There they are." Baymax droned, pointing his marshmallowy arm towards a booth.

"Yo, Hiro!" called out a voice.

Stepping out from behind Baymax, I spotted Hiro's friends.

The one waving was a big nosed man with blond hair and wearing… something. A horrible clash of tie-dye and orange with a beanie. I was reminded of a skater from the eighties or something. Or a hippie. That had to be 'Fred.'

I recognized Gogo at an arcade game just behind him, pulling and jerking on the controls with one hand while the other rapid pressed buttons. The black guy next to her was Wasabi, if my memory served.

"Hey, guys!" Hiro waved, smiling as he walked forward. Baymax and I followed a second later.

I looked them over, eyeing each critically.

They were my age, maybe even a little older.

But with the way they acted, the honest, unguarded looks in their eyes... they just seemed like… such children.

It was Laura, or Honey Lemon, that first noticed me, her eyes widening for a moment before she smiled and stood to greet all three of us.

"Hi! I'm Laura, but most people call me Honey Lemon. Hiro told us you're Taylor, right? We've really been looking forward to meeting you."

I nodded, trying to remember my manners, trying to be polite, trying to ignore how badly these kids were gonna get hurt. When had I last met anyone so carefree, so...naive?

"Yeah. Taylor Hebert. Likewise."

I tried to smile back.

(X)(X)(X)

Stories:

\- Complete: - Reconciliation (Worm AU), A knight in the Dark (Naruto/Souls, Oneshot), Lines (Mass Effect, Oneshot), Like Mother like Skitter, Unfit (Naruto)

\- In progress - Outcry: Worm/Dark Souls (Alt Power), Souls of Heroes (Fate/Souls), Legacy Undone (Naruto), Umbram Mortis (Worm AU), No good deed... (Worm AU), Overwatch shorts, Exodus: (Worm/BH6),

-TV-Tropes pages-

Outcry / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, No Good Deed (Fanfic) - TV Tropes , Reconciliation Worm / Fan Fic - TV Tropes , Like Mother Like Skitter / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, Legacy Undone / Fan Fic - TV Tropes (Please contribute if possible :))

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#515

2.2

The pizza was good.

Even with a prosthetic that was clumsy at the best of times, I could still enjoy it.

With pepperoni, a tomato sauce that had some spice or seasoning I wasn't used to, and top grade cheese, I could safely say these people could bake a good pizza.

As good as it was though, it really didn't do anything to block out the tense awkwardness I could feel radiating from the group around me.

The black guy, Wasabi, or Damien, looked like he was stuck in his chair, sitting ramrod straight, and staring at me with wide eyes like he just wanted me to finish my pizza so he could get to talking. Fred, the hippie looking one, was looking at me, cupping his chin in deep thought. Gogo was glaring daggers into me.

Hiro sat in the middle, very obviously trying not to fidget.

Frankly, the only ones that seemed completely immune (or oblivious) to the tension were Honey Lemon and Baymax, with her animatedly poking his medical files to bounce ideas for her chemistry.

At least, I think that was her shtick.

I listened to her as I ate my slice of pizza, calmly ignoring the other three.

I cleared my throat.

"HOW MUCH DO YOU KNOW? AND WHO HAVE YOU TOLD?"

I half-jumped where I sat, blinking as I suddenly found myself staring up at the wild eyed, terrified looking Wasabi, who was leaning over the table looking at me like he was about to cry. Even Gogo and Fred were as spooked I was by his sudden declaration, looking scared silly.

I blinked, opening my mouth to speak —

"You can't tell my parents! Seriously! You can't! I'll be in so much trouble, and if the school finds out, I could lose my scholarship! And if that happens, that means dead Wasabi! Seriously, Fred will pay you! Just ask how much!"

"Hey!" came Fred's indignant squawk.

"I'll make him pay you!" Wasabi promised.

He seemed finished…

I opened my mouth again.

"Please!"

He really did look like he was about to cry.

…

I cleared my throat.

...

"Could you pass the parmesan, please?" I asked.

There was silence across the table before Baymax helpfully assisted by bringing forth one big, fluffy hand, grabbing the cheese shaker by its little curved handle between two fat fingers, and sliding it towards me.

"Thanks," I said, slowly taking it out of his hand.

"Sit down, idiot." Gogo all but snarled, grabbing Wasabi by the back of his belt and pulling him to his seat, before turning towards me.

"Look. Stop dragging this out," she said. "You want something, or will want something, with what you know. So, what exactly is it gonna take to keep you quiet?"

Not for the first time, I recognized just how different this place was.

Back home, the thought of holding someone's civilian identity over their heads like some kind of ransom would have been ludicrous. It would have put me on everyone's instant hit list.

Hell, I would have been dead the moment I got on the trolley.

Here, though… here, the unwritten rules didn't exist. They had no reason to exist. As far as I could tell, these were the only 'Heroes' the world had, not even any notable criminals that used any kind of special equipment or masks.

I hoped it stayed that way.

"I don't want anything," I said, shaking my head. "Wanna make that perfectly clear. It's why I came here tonight." I tried to emphasize that as much as possible. "Hiro told me while I was recovering, trying to tell me stories so I could learn to talk again. Even if I did have someone to tell, I wouldn't turn around and screw over someone who saved me and kept helping me for over a year."

Honey Lemon turned to Gogo, sticking out her tongue. "See, I told ya!"

Gogo didn't look at all convinced, still glaring at me like she could bore a hole through my skull.

That was good. Better than Honey Lemon or Wasabi, whose relief was almost a tangible thing as he slumped in his seat.

Kids, I was reminded.

Children.

"Well, that's all well and good." It was Fred that spoke up this time, rubbing at his chin. "But you still know about us…"

He snapped his fingers. "I got it!"

Gogo smacked her forehead, dragging her hand down across her face. "Oh my god." Her dismayed groan was muffled by her hand.

"Nah, think about it!" Fred gushed, leaning forward with renewed enthusiasm. "This could really be great. All the best teams have one, somebody to hold down base, be the brains of the group that goes out there to fight. Like, gathering intelligence. You're probably great at gathering intel and listening in on people!"

I took a long, slow drink of my soda. I was doing a wonderful job of ignoring the dozen or so conversations my bugs had been listening to for the last ten minutes while trying out the best poker face of my life.

"It's like, Sightseer with the Raptoresses! Or Darknight for the League of Paragons! Or Lady Arachnia for the World's Strongest! Coming up with strategies, finding weaknesses, giving heads-up to bad stuff coming our way! I bet that you're great at the multi-tasking we'd need."

What the hell was he on?

"Heck, I bet that you could —"

A hand, Wasabi's hand, slowly inched its way over Fred's mouth, clasping down and reducing his shouting to muffled nonsense that sounded vaguely like words.

And yes. It had grown to shouting.

He didn't seem to have noticed. He was still screaming his head off into Wasabi's palm.

"This happens," he offered as an explanation, along with an awkward smile.

I nodded. "I… see that."

"It's… not a bad idea," Hiro tentatively put forward.

I looked towards him, and he was smiling a little nervously in my direction. "You already know. So… the more involved…"

The less incentive I'd have to go talking about it. I finished the thought in my head.

Less incentive than Fred, at any rate.

"We don't even know the first thing about her, Hiro!" Gogo protested. "She hasn't told us anything outside of her name. All we have is that and the fact that she pissed someone off enough that they decided she had to get double-tapped."

"Gogo!" Honey Lemon's horrified face spoke volumes, as did Wasabi's cringe.

They were all curious. They just didn't know how to breach the subject in a way they were comfortable with, apparently.

I'm not sure what look must have crossed my face as I locked eyes with Gogo, but I saw that bravado whither under my gaze.

"Don't really remember much, to be honest." I managed to bite out. "All I get are, well, flashes." I reached forward and took another sip of my soda.

A big part of me wished that was true.

She seemed to steel herself, returning to her previous glare. "Well ain't that convenient," she hissed at me with the lowest tone possible.

Baymax held up a finger. "Long and short term memory loss are common when a patient has sustained significant trauma to the head and brain. While victims that have survived bullet wounds to the cranium have, at times, recovered fully with all memories intact, others have struggled to recall basic information about their lives before the traumatic event. One subject, did not remember his birthday, or the names of his spouse, parents, or children, though he recognized them on sight."

Gogo looked like she was ready to argue with him when Hiro decided to speak up, interrupting her. "Look," he said. "Gogo, I get why you're worried, but Fred's idea isn't exactly bad, when you think about it."

It was.

It was probably the worst idea I could think of.

My powers were returning, little by little, bit by bit. But that didn't mean I wanted to return.

After Scion, if I never heard of a 'Trigger' or a 'Parahuman' or 'Villain' or 'Vigilante' or 'Hero' again, I could die a happy woman, here.

Fred wanted me to 'join up,' because he thought it'd be 'cool,' like his comic books. Hiro wanted me to join, probably because he wanted it, but also to put Gogo and Wasabi at ease by making me 'liable' — just as much a part of it as them. To make me stand as much to lose as them if word ever got out.

Gogo just wanted me to keep my mouth shut, no questions asked. Or to just disappear. Not be the proverbial Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads.

The by and large truth of it was I didn't want to get back into this.

Normalcy was boring. Nice, slow. Something I hadn't realized I'd been craving for a long time.

But I looked at them, listened as Hiro and Gogo argued back and forth, Wasabi still shutting Fred up and Honey sitting by the side lines.

Just kids, I was reminded, again.

Kids who were gonna end up getting themselves hurt or worse.

Hiro's suits didn't even really have anything to conceal identities, outside of some lightly tinted and reflective hard plastic. Honey was looking at the world like it was a petting zoo. Wasabi had thought to cave and bribe me in order to keep me quiet, not realizing that would only be a temporary measure, if it was an option at all. Hiro, like Cass wanted to see the good in me without ever really knowing me or asking me questions. And Gogo had the right mindset, but not the aggression to follow through with what she knew was the most efficient solution. If I was in her shoes, I would have taken her position and probably taken it one step further.

With black widows.

Lots of them.

"— And that's why we need somebody like you with the team!"

Fred suddenly lurched forward, out of Wasabi's grip, apparently reaching the height of his sales pitch and looking at me with a big, stupid smile across his face and drowning out Gogo and Hiro's discussion-cum-argument.

Everyone seemed to shut up, turning to look at Fred. I finished sipping my soda and went for another slice.

What was I doing?

Kids, I saw.

I saw kids.

I saw myself. Myself as a young girl who idolized Armsmaster. The girl who wanted to be a hero to prove her doubters wrong. To be a hero and stop a notorious Japanese gangster from killing kids.

Ignorance could get people killed.

Slowly, ever so slowly, I let my head bob, nodding once.

"Okay. I'll help."

Fred pumped his fist with a "Yes!" Wasabi seemed to have calmed down completely, Hiro and Honey Lemon were grinning ear to ear.

Gogo still had her narrowed eyes on me, suspicion rolling off of her like a wave. That was good. That was really, really good.

"Well!" Fred clapped his hands. "I think our new confidant is ready to go!" He cracked his knuckles. "Alright, we are going to need to give you a command station."

"A what?" Gogo asked with a incredulous eyebrow.

"You know! Lots of computers! Surveillance cameras that we can attach to our gear!" Fred exclaimed. "You can do that, right, Hiro?"

I tried to interrupt, tell them I didn't need that much, or any of it, really, but I wasn't sure how to say it, without actually telling them. Getting a word in edgewise as they started going off on a computer tech rant, with even Wasabi chiming in to bounce ideas, seemed like an exercise in futility.

Like a brick smacking me in the face, it seemed to hit me.

What the hell am I doing?

"Excuse me…" I managed as my stomach lurched, feeling sick. "I need to use the bathroom." Abruptly, I got out of my chair and made my way through the restaurant at a brisk walk, weaving past its patrons and finding the ladies room. I got to the sink and cranked it, let some water pool in my left hand, and splashed it over my face.

I let out a sigh and looked up at my reflection; not the fuller and healthier face, but a gaunt face, still not quite recovered from months in a hospital bed, and dark eyes peered back at me.

Am I staring at Skitter, Weaver, or Khepri?

I heard the door open behind me and I saw her in the mirror. Gogo. She glared at me like she could kill me with her eyes.

"You don't know when to back off, do you?" she hissed.

I almost, almost laughed.

You don't get to kill the closest equivalent to God by having those words in your vocabulary.

As it was, I did smile, staring down into the water in the sink. "Hiro did insist, and it would have been awkward, if I stayed away."

"You're taking advantage of a fifteen year old kid while having us by the balls." She pointed, jabbing a finger at me. "You may have convinced Laura, Hiro, and Fred, and maybe Damien, but I don't buy it. I'll be keeping both eyes on you and I swear —"

"That's good." The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them.

Gogo was caught by surprise. "What?"

"I said, that's good." I repeated, looking back up and at her through the mirror. "You're not as trusting. It's good… healthy. That could save you all, one day."

I remembered my own friends as I spoke.

Brian.

Rachel.

Alec.

Aisha.

Lisa.

Was this how they would have turned out somewhere other than Earth Bet?

"Keep that caution," I insisted, turning around to see her face to face. "It could mean the difference between life and death."

She looked at me, her face and her stare still hard and distrusting, before she pushed the door open and walked back out.

I spent another few moments gathering myself, breathing and washing my face again, then I returned back to the table.

"So! We have come to an agreement!" Fred exclaimed proudly. I really should talk to him about secrecy. If he was such a comic nerd, he should know better. Probably riding the high of adding a new teammate. "That you shall be our Mission Control but." He pointed at me. "It shall be twofold. With my boy Heathcliff as the driver, and you as our eyes and ears in the big pie in the sky and the dog pound on the ground." I looked at Wasabi.

"He means you get to ride in a van or some high tech car with the butler as the driver, and you working on the cameras and comm feeds," he said, translating into English for me.

"Wait." I snapped my fingers. "The butler is in on this?" So there was another person?

"Oh yeah, Heathcliff helped a lot in training us!" Honey Lemon ticked them off on her fingers. "Like being target practice, making us be targets, preparing our meals, all the good stuff! He's such a great guy!"

Well, least I knew I wouldn't be in this alone.

"Well. I know little about computers but..." I shrugged, offering a smile. "I learn on my feet. Count me in."

"Alright! Welcome to the —" Fred caught himself as everyone was staring at him, myself included. Didn't help other patrons in the restaurant were looking in on the scene. "To the, uhh. Herd! The Nerd Herd!"

"The Nerd Herd?" I whispered down to Hiro.

The smile he gave me was fond and a little sad.

"It's our little group nickname. Tadashi coined it."

"And it is with great pleasure, that I, Frederick Stanford Miller," Fred said in an uppity tone. "Welcome you into our humble abode." He even gave a super over the top bow, his hand hitting Wasabi right in the nose and bringing out a "Hey!" from him. "Enchante, Je sees confidante~".

I raised an eyebrow… "Enchanté, ma confidente." I corrected.

Fred's eyes grew wide as Laura now burst out laughing.

"Whoa, you speak French!?" he said, impressed.

"Just a little," I answered. "When you're in a hospital bed with nothing but dictionaries to catch up on the human language, plus the audio aides, you tend to learn a few things." It was true. During my hospital stay, after I relearned my English and learned basic, child-like Japanese, I looked into other foreign languages, with a preference for French. Mom's grandparents were French Freedom Fighters during World War 2. It was… always something I wanted to learn.

"Oh my god, she knows French and other languages!" Fred grinned stupidly. "It's like a dream come true!"

I saw a marshmallowy fist come close to me, and I realized Baymax was offering a fist bump.

"Is this... " I pointed at the white balloon robot. "For real?"

"He likes it." Hiro smiled.

Fuck. Why not.

I bumped it, and I got him waving his fingers as he uttered, "Balalalala."

It made me smile.

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Jun 30, 2017

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#559

2.3

Fred was rich.

No, not rich.

He was obscenely rich.

This house felt like it could fit the old Boston Protectorate roster in its living room.

Hell, the marble floor could probably pay off the rent of an apartment complex for a year.

Every second I spent standing here, I found something or other that seemed more expensive than anything I could own in my life.

Hiro had asked me to meet him down here. The others were studying, if I wasn't mistaken, and Fred was working as the mascot of a cafe…

Mascot of a cafe. While having enough money to buy that Cafe and twenty others across the city.

As if to accentuate my inner thoughts, the butler walked out of the room he'd marched into not three minutes ago. "Ahem. If you'll follow me, Miss, Master Hamada is ready to see you now."

With a prim about face, he turned and started to leave.

I took one more look around the… foyer? (Is that what this was called?) Before following after him, running my first few steps before I caught up.

We moved through three other rooms; one, a library, then a room I could only assume was for sitting to read the books of that library, because all it had was an assortment of chairs, and the last was a room containing someone's collection of an impressive array of fishing rods and related equipment.

Then, finally, we got to the garage.

For six cars.

I saw Hiro all the way at the end… where this family apparently had a full machine shop, including one of those cradles to lift cars.

Obscenely rich didn't even begin to cover it.

Even so, Hiro seemed ready and willing to take full advantage of this opulent wealth in its entirety, as he worked with a clearly visible glee. Wires and metal strewn about the floor, with expensive looking equipment resting neat and orderly off to the side.

"Just buzz if you need anything, Miss."

I'd almost forgotten Heathcliff was there. His voice actually made me jump a bit. "Buzz?"

A thin, bony hand emerged from behind his back and pointed to the wall behind me. I turned and found a very obvious intercom beside the door I'd just walked through.

"Ahh. Thanks, but I think we'll be fine."

"Of course, Miss."

Once more with a sharp turn that looked like it'd scuff the floor with the soles of his shoes, the man faced away from me and marched out the door to go do… whatever. Maybe clean?

...

Actually, yeah. Now that I thought about it, keeping this place clean must be a full time job ten times over.

Turning away from the butler and the intercom, I looked to Hiro. Baymax, who stood perfectly calm and placid by the toolbox, raised his hand and offered a strange circular wave.

"Hello, Taylo-"

"OW!"

The robot's placid voice was sharply swallowed by the sound of metal clanging loudly on the cement floor, with Hiro now groaning and cradling the top of his head.

Baymax leaned over. "On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your pain?"

The young teen groaned, rubbing at his head and throwing a baleful glare at the puffy marshmallow robot, who I could swear was somehow managing to look smug, while being completely innocent. Hiro looked over to me, smiling as he pulled himself out from under the car. "Hey, Taylor! Welcome to Fred's mansion." He stood up fully and smiled up at me with oil and grime on his face.

"See Fred's hallway of fame yet?"

I was almost afraid to ask.

"Hallway...of Fame?" My curiosity got the better of me.

He smiled a little wider. "Then you're good. The hallway is…unique." I felt he was trying to be nice. "Filled up with some of Fred's… hobbies." The hero of the Big Hero 6 walked over to me as he wiped his hands free of oil and muck. "Alright, gimme a sec and I'll show ya where you'll be working."

I nodded, already tossing a look at the car and some of the gear Hiro was still looking to instal in it, trying not to feel guilty at the expense, even as I knew I'd most likely never, or at least very rarely, use any of it.

Hiro opened up another door, stepping inside to what I assumed was the equivalent of a tool shed closet or something. Turning on a faucet over a washer sink, he started to wash off his hands and face to get some of the grime off.

I decided to look at some of the cars while I waited.

Surprisingly, there were only two really expensive cars, one a luxury Mercedes, the other a Porsche.

The other three seemed… kind of normal, actually. With one even being a minivan next to an SUV.

Swiss army knife choices, I guessed.

I felt around with the bugs in my range, using them to slowly begin mapping out the house, getting a feel for what was in its different rooms.

Tossing another look into the 'inconspicuous' van that would be housing all the gear, I had to wonder just how much Hiro knew about cars.

I mean… as far as I knew, robotics and car mechanics weren't dissimilar, but they weren't exactly close siblings in the job department, either.

"Where'd you learn to work on cars?"

"Huh?" He poked his head out of the shed. "Whazzat?"

"Cars." I repeated. "Motors. Where'd you learn to work on 'em?"

There was quiet, for about a second longer than one would consider normal, before he answered.

"Tadashi."

...

Ah hell.

"We couldn't really afford a car or a lot of repairs or whatever," he said, stepping out with a towel drying his hands. "So when Tadashi got his little scooter motorcycle, he practically ate up the books on mechanics. Learned how to fix it up and keep it at one hundred percent. Picked up quite a bit watching him."

"I see." I said.

The pause and silence between us was a pregnant one, and I wasn't exactly sure what to say, or how to proceed. In lieu of not wanting to stick my foot in my mouth again, I cleared my throat and decided to quickly pivot and redirect.

"So, what exactly are you stuffing into this thing?" I asked, looking to their 'inconspicuous' van.

Hiro grinned. "Some upgrades." He offered me a flashlight. "Wanna check it out?"

"I'll… take your word for it." I didn't want to get myself all dirty.

"Well, I had to add some additional security, like a fingerprint reader on the door knobs and some special glass. Can't have anyone getting in there. Heathcliff is going to be driving while you're on the tech inside." Hiro went to the van and opened up the back doors. "Speaking of which, here it is."

I allowed myself to let out a low whistle.

There was a work station/desk that was bolted down in the back of the van with eight monitors, two computer towers, and a keyboard.

There was a surprising lack of wires.

Hiro stepped inside, smiling as he sat down on the squat chair.

"Worked on this all day yesterday." He smiled. "Wasabi and Fred helped. Well, Wasabi mostly. Fred helped pay for the equipment."

Stepping inside, I felt a bit of nostalgia. In many ways, it reminded me of a PRT van. I took a seat by a bolted chair that also had the good fortune of having a seatbelt attached. Leather and soft.

They really didn't spare any expense.

"Right. So, we've got the monitors linked up to our helmet cams," he said, pointing to an array of six monitors to the left of where I'd be staring. "Along with a monitor that'll be attached to a spy drone and another that's gonna be monitoring everyone's vitals along with a locator as soon as I update the suits. We're gonna be adding more as we go along." He looked almost giddy, probably imagining the future upgrades in his head.

"So, what do you think?" asked Hiro with a grin, looking like a dog who has brought back a bone to his master.

In all honesty, I have seen better from Tinkers.

…

But he wasn't a Tinker, I had to remind myself.

This wasn't the work of a Parahuman, but of a human kid, younger than me, who is already making money selling patented nursery care robots and going to a technical college and moonlighting as a… cape? Did that term even apply anymore?

I smiled. "I like it. A lot." I leaned back in my chair and looked at the various monitors. I reached over and pressed a button, and making me jump was a holographic screen.

Hiro must have noticed my look. "Don't have holograms where you're from?"

"Not really… closest thing is smartphones with touch screens." I answered back as I looked to the boy. "Hey, if it's okay by you, while you finish tinkering with the van, can I get accustomed to this? I'm still new to holograms and their motions and, well, I wanna learn it at my own pace."

"Sure thing." Hiro waved it off and got back down below, grabbing some tools and getting to work as I started up the comm rig. The PC units hummed to life, as did the monitors and several holographic screen displayed before me in a semicircle.

I took a deep breath. I won't be using this to its fullest ability, and deep down it made me a bit sad. Someone like Linda would go-

Linda?

Or was it Lynn? Lesley? Lisa?

…

Was she still alive?

How am I forgetting her name?

I was suddenly glad Hiro was out of sight.

The… lurch that cut through my gut as an apple lodged itself in my throat caught me off guard. The sudden rush of emotion hit me like a train and it was, for the first time in my memory, genuinely hard to hold back the tears.

I can see her. Blonde hair. Mischievous playful eyes. A biting, snarky tone.

But the name. And her face. Its fuzzy.

Why am I forgetting her name?

But I stopped. I breathed long and slow until the clenching in my chest eased and the muscles that felt as taut as a bowstring relaxed again. I heard the fingers of my prosthetic hand twitching with loud, mechanical movements as my brain apparently sent unclear signals through the interface.

Sometimes, I remembered them. Sometimes, I didn't. Her name… it was at the tip of my tongue, but…

I couldn't remember!

I shook my head and patted my cheeks, taking more deep breaths to calm myself.

I turned towards the monitors, pushing all thoughts and memories out of my mind, forcing them away until I could have a moment alone later. For now, I looked at the holographic display.

"Okay… Time to test you out."

I would be at it for the rest of the day, experimenting with holographic screens. How to maximize them, minimize them, tap on which screen to type using the keyboard, and how to utilize the communications network.

It wasn't fun.

At all.

By the end of the day, I managed to learn a bit on how Comm Units worked as I rode the bus back to Cass' house. Got to thank her again for giving me the day off.

As I rode on the bus, a familiar little curiosity rolled into my range.

A food truck. Driven by two men with loaded guns.

Same guys from a few weeks ago, different from the one's last week, if their voices were anything to go by.

It came up closer and I raised my eyes up, out the window to catch sight of it. Taking a mental note this time of its name, catching a glimpse of the driver as well.

Cheng Foods.

The bus reached my stop, right across the street from Cass' shop, and I saw the truck pass us by all over again.

And that was the sign of a gang making their transports.

I took a deep, slow breath…

Most people would be bothered by criminals passing regularly through their street.

I was bothered more by how unbothered I was… and how I couldn't help my own growing sense of... anticipation…

Of… excitement.

I felt my jaw working, the prosthetic limb still twitching with unclear movements before I regained my focus. I took a deep breath as I got up, leaving the bus.

I could see Mochi sitting by the window sill, and the fat cat jumped down, clearly racing to the door down the stairs.

I'm pretty sure he likes me.

I saw the truck pass through the green light and I took a deep breath, letting the coiled tension ease out of me.

Last edited: Mar 13, 2019

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559

Ld1449

Jun 30, 2017

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Ld1449

To the last, Kill them all

Jul 14, 2017

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#600

2.4

"..."

My mouth moved soundlessly as I stared out at the street at the massive… limo? What the hell did you call a limo crossed with a hummer?

The thought 'Why?' came to mind, but I really didn't voice it.

Even with my silence, though, Hiro seemed to sense my confusion. He looked at me from the window, with Baymax offering his customary circular wave.

"Hello world...and Taylor," the healthcare bot said.

I blinked.

Was that a movie reference?

"You're hanging out way too much with Fred," Hiro grumbled before looking towards me, noticing the other question in my eyes. "Fred's parents came home… long enough to borrow the car for their cross country roadtrip."

Again. I looked at the car. "And this is the only replacement?"

Hiro shrugged. "Kinda… I woulda said take the subway, but Fred was pretty sure this'd be faster."

"...I could have taken a cab."

Judging by the look on his face, they… hadn't thought of that.

I decided to just let it go. Not like a new car was just gonna emerge out of thin air.

I stepped up to the thing, opening the door that made me feel absurdly small, before I slid into the seat next to Hiro. Baymax was sitting on a side seat slightly ahead of me, his big bulbous body smushed between the seat and the roof of the car, looking something like a marshmallow squeezed between two crackers.

"I am not small."

"No, you are not," I answered, feeling an amused smile tugging at my lip before turning to Hiro. "So… You call and pick me up on my day off of work. What's up?"

"Since we've all got some free time today, I thought it would be best if we could go on a test run." He smiled as the car began to wind its way through traffic back to Fred's house.

I didn't smile back; a knot of worry coiled in my gut.

"Simulation? Or field?"

I wasn't sure which one filled me with more dread.

"Simulation," he replied, as though it should have been obvious.

I tried not to dwell on the mild disappointment I felt.

"Me and Fred came up with it. He wanted to do a full on virtual reality thing. He's calling it 'The Danger Room' or something, but all we have are headsets. I told him this like ten times."

"Better to start slow," I said. I wasn't sure if it was for him or for me. "More pragmatic and it's basically field training without the danger." I supplied as I leaned back in my seat.

We got on the causeway and I notice a billboard.

'Come visit San Fransokyo! If you're lucky, you may see the Big Hero 6!'

It was a silhouette of the city in red and white colors, with blue figures jumping over the rooftops in the background.

Was this… how it started? The 'Golden Age' of heroes before the world went to hell?

I felt pain in my hand, and I looked down in time to see my flesh and blood fist clenched so tight my nails were threatening to break my skin.

Hiro was saying something, but it felt like white noise in the back of my mind as I struggled to calm my heartbeat and control my breathing.

Calm down… calm down… cal-

"Symptoms; accelerated palpitations, sweating of the hands, mild shaking, shortness of breath." Baymax's voice suddenly cut through the haze, bringing my attention towards him. "Prognosis: heart attack." He reached forward with both hands, his head squeaking across the roof as he leaned closer. "Clear."

It was Hiro that stopped him, leaning forward and grabbing at his wrists. "Woah buddy, I don't think Tay's having a heart attack." Even as he said it, when he looked at me I could see the concern in his eyes. "Though you do look really pale. Are you feeling okay? If you're not feeling up to this we can just-"

"Just the yips is all." I cut him off, clenching my fist to stop the shaking as I held it to my side, trying to smile as best I could

Get it fucking together, Taylor…

"Never… really done this before."

Worst. Lie. Of. My. Life.

The young boy had a pensive look. "It's just a field test. Not like you're going to be thrown into the deep end or anything. You sure you wanna do this?"

"I'll be fine. Just gotta calm down." I leaned back and took some much needed breathing exercises that I learned during my hospital stay. It did help learning those. Inhale for seven seconds… hold it in...and-

There was a mass squeak of vinyl before squishy arms were around me.

No.

I opened my eyes and sure enough Baymax was hugging me. All smushed marshmallow robot enveloping my tiny self like an overgrown throw-rug.

Then he patted me on my head.

"There, there," he said as calmly and as compassionately as possible.

I looked at Hiro.

Whom was slowly raising his phone.

"Don't you-"

Click.

He was grinning from ear to ear…

"...Thank you Baymax." I tried to be nice… I really, really did. "I feel much better."

"Psychological studies indicate that warm physical contact for at least twenty seconds in this manner is recommended when someone is nervous, or afraid."

He started to glow.

"There are approximately thirteen seconds left."

I sighed. Despite my protests, the warm glow felt incredible. Though the clinical breakdown reminded me of someone else. Someone who felt more machine than man half the time. Who I hated… and then respected.

I remembered his face.

But not his name.

Something that was becoming more and more common as the days wore on and the memories slowly returned. I got episodes.

…

I hadn't told any of them.

No one needed to know about this weakness. To say so would invite questions of my old life. Questions I wanted to avoid.

If the only way to effectively do that was to leave it buried under brain trauma, so be it.

I'd manage.

I always had.

(X)

We got to the house and the group was there, with Fred diving right into it. His mouth moved a mile a minute, detailing what duties I would have and all the gear they'd finally settled on for me.

Everything, all ranging from looking up at the sky for satellites or drones to keeping an ear on the ground for mutated crocodile men in the sewers. Or Mole Men. Never trust Mole Men.

His words. Not mine.

Hiro kept correcting his flagrant "alternative facts" with 'actual' facts and telling me the actual specs of the tech they had.

In summation: 'Look at the monitors and keep an ear on the comms'. Hiro and Fred even found a way to get some sort of black box of sorts; apparently, they used that to intercept police communications. It was how they were able to respond to the scene so fast.

They were thinking of putting special high focus cameras and comms on those weather balloons that hung around the city, but that was still, in Hiro's words, in the 'brainstorming' phase.

It sounded like a good idea to me. Best to be proactive with threats rather than reactive.

"Alright!" Fred clapped his hands and grinned deviously at me. I quirked an eyebrow. "Now, for the single most important thing for you, Taylor." He oiled, rubbing his hands like some moustache twirling villain as he approached. I could see Damien roll his eyes.

"And that is…?" I asked.

"Your costume!" Fred exclaimed. "We gotta make you a cool looking costume! You're one of the Big Hero 6, after all!"

"If she's joining, wouldn't that make it seven?" Damien inquired.

"Big Hero 7 sounds fun!" Laura chirped in, plopping down on the couch next to me

"But… Six sounds better. I mean, I'm just the…" I paused. "Fly on the wall… No one should even know I'm there."

I could feel Leiko's eyes on me before she went back to her phone, her feet kicked up and her body spread all on another couch.

"I'm sure, for this test, she doesn't need a costume, and even if she did, it's up to her." Hiro stepped in.

"I… don't really have anything in mind for a costume," I admitted.

I was lying, of course. But I'd make it myself. My spider silk was still a better option than most of Hiro's lightweight materials. Gogo's armor was more for streamlining for speed and pads to absorb impacts should she fall. Not for stopping anything fast or lucky enough to hit her. Honey Lemon's was little more than a skin tight jump-suit plus helmet.

Hiro's focus was purely in their tools. Not, so far, in the protective aspects of their armor outside of Fred, and Baymax.

I'd have to make sure that changed soon. Give them suggestions. I'd seen enough powerful Tinkers to know how effective their gear could make them.

"If I think of something, you guys'll be the first to know," I promised.

"Great!" Hiro jumped up to his feet. "Me and Wasabi found a great place to practice."

"Come on, Rook! Time's a wasting!" Fred cheered.

Rook?

Did he just… call me Rook?

"It'll pass. He probably had too much soda." Hiro placed a hand on my shoulder, Baymax waddling right behind him.

(X)

"We have arrived, sir…"

Heathcliff's droll voice billowed through the insides of the van. All seven of us were cramped in the back, with Baymax folded into his far more convenient and small powering station stuffed in a corner.

The two back doors opened a second later, letting Fred in his Fredzilla costume fall back on his ass, with Wasabi and Honey Lemon stepping out behind him.

"Watch your step, sir." Heathcliff said drily.

That let me to finally see where they intended to "practice."

…

What.

"A baseball field?" I gawked, staring up at the completely empty stands. Row upon row of empty seats loomed over us.

"Its big, empty, and gives us plenty of room for the simulations," Hiro explained, pulling out Baymax' powering station to let the big marshmallow bot pop out and step off the little platform.

"Aren't there, like… maintenance staff or something?" I questioned.

"Yeah, but they only come in tuesdays, thursdays, and saturdays on the off season. So we're all clear." Fred smiled as he picked himself up. "Scouted it out myself."

It was no Boat Graveyard…

…

I didn't like it.

"This is really exposed," I said, looking back out to Hiro as he put on his helmet, Baymax waddling beside him. The other members of the Six were wearing their costumes, so Hiro and Baymax must not be participating.

"No one can see us from the road, no one can step in here without us seeing them. It'll be fine." Hiro reassured me, pointing at Heathcliff, who sat in the van.

I reached out, stretching my senses as far as they could go.

Not far enough. Not enough to cover every entrance and every corner…. But enough at least to give us ample warning, so props there.

I moved the bugs into place, keeping more in reserve just in case I needed them to pounce on someone. If there was anyone coming, I'd be the first to know. And they could scurry off with bees buzzing around their face. Or a spider on their shoulder.

"Don't worry, we thought this through, Taylor," Fred spoke from within his lizard costume. I sighed, a hand going over my face.

"'Kay." I walked back into the van, deciding not to argue. If something went wrong, I'd deal with it. I heard the door close in behind, Heathcliff still in the driver's seat. "So," I put on the headset with the speaker near my mouth. The monitors blinked to life and I got several camera feeds on the monitors, each with a name on them.

Fredzilla. Chemistress. Wasabi. Tracer Girl. Big Red and Hero.

Hero…

I took a deep breath, pinching the bridge of my nose.

The fact that a boy genius who doesn't have a passenger as far as I can tell, so far removed from Earth Bet here, is naming himself not only after his own name but on one of the greatest Tinkers in Bet's history…

He didn't even know.

He didn't even have the slightest clue to the significance of that name.

"So, how are we doing this?" I asked, speaking into the mic.

"Alright, can you see us?" Hiro spoke through the comm as he moved his head side to side, him looking up at Baymax. With my other window, I could see through Baymax's camera a waving Hiro.

"Yeah. Gogo, Wasabi, Fred, Honey. Your feeds are good."

"Cool."

"Alright! So, what do we do next?"

"Easy!" Fred crowed. "We use the field, or go into the hallways. One's good for practicing open fighting in the streets, the other's good for practicing fights that happen in-doors in smaller spaces."

There was… nothing wrong with that logic? The 'maze' of hallways and tight corners of the baseball stadium would allow them to practice splitting up and letting me practice coordinating their movements.

I placed a fly on each of them, watching as they started to put on some eye gear.

Hiro sat down besides Baymax, and suddenly the monitors were alive with the virtual reality program coming to life.

"Sniper!" Fred yelled. I just managed to look at his monitor and catch a glimpse of some red blob on the VR feed before Fred was moving, ducking into cover behind our truck.

Gogo, Wasabi, and Honey Lemon weren't so quick.

"Ahh!" Wasabi shouted.

"And you're already dead." Hiro laughed from his control panel.

I really… really tried to bite my tongue and be nice.

But…

"That was just sad..." I uttered. "So… so sad…"

"Hey!"

"Dead again," Hiro chirped.

I pinched the bridge of my nose.

Stories:

\- Complete: - Reconciliation (Worm AU), A knight in the Dark (Naruto/Souls, Oneshot), Lines (Mass Effect, Oneshot), Like Mother like Skitter, Unfit (Naruto)

\- In progress - Outcry: Worm/Dark Souls (Alt Power), Souls of Heroes (Fate/Souls), Legacy Undone (Naruto), Umbram Mortis (Worm AU), No good deed... (Worm AU), Overwatch shorts, Exodus: (Worm/BH6),

-TV-Tropes pages-

Outcry / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, No Good Deed (Fanfic) - TV Tropes , Reconciliation Worm / Fan Fic - TV Tropes , Like Mother Like Skitter / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, Legacy Undone / Fan Fic - TV Tropes (Please contribute if possible :))

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Jul 14, 2017

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To the last, Kill them all

Jul 27, 2017

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#671

2.5

Same time of the week, that truck passed through right in front of our shop, men with glocks and all.

You could call me manipulative, or impatient, or reckless.

But I'd had enough of this.

The shops busy hours were from eight AM to two PM, so I asked Cass to be let loose at two. Seeing as how I had no real social life or… any life, really, beyond Cass, her family in Hiro and Baymax, and Hiro's friends, she allowed it.

So I left. Every day at two PM. And at three when that truck rolled by, I would follow. I'd tag it with a bug until it was out of my range, then I'd make a mental note for the next week as to where that was. And the next week, I'd wait there and continue, following block by block.

Of course, they never noticed a thing, even as they left the suburbs of San Fransokyo and made their way into the east side, past the Kawa Park and Samurai Arena towards the docks.

It was always the docks with these guys.

On the last day, I was running on fumes by the time I stopped just outside the docks at a Tokyo Joe's, where most of the blue collar dockworkers went to lunch.

Ten blocks, a bus, and a short subway ride, and I was exhausted. I realized then that I had to start exercising again, because this? This was ridiculous.

I sat down at a bus stop and caught my breath, waiting.

They passed right by me.

This time, I saw where they stopped.

I just had to get close to the fence that separated me from the warehouses. I just leaned my back against the chain-link fence and looked up to cloud gaze, while I reached out to pick out flies to go in and see what this gang was carrying. Feeling around…

The roaches and flies crawled and scurried their way through the grimy floors and into the cargo crates, wriggling through the tight little gaps.

Packing foam was what I felt, little white puff balls, that concealed more boxes, smaller, the items in there were… Ahhh. There.

A false floor.

And beneath… bags, tightly packed bags.

"Drugs," I muttered to myself. I stood up and gave one last look back.

Warehouse 15.

As I began to walk my way back to a trolley to head home, I started to think, working up a story in my mind. A way to get Hiro and the others down here without revealing my powers to them.

Then… a thought came to me.

This would be their 'Lung'. I was driving them straight into biting off more than they could chew.

Kids. Children.

That was all they were.

I stole a glance back at the warehouse.

They needed experience, I reasoned.

There were no 'gang territories,' here. No "established areas" where one could find crime. This wasn't even Brockton Bay with a high crime rate where one could literally walk through the streets at night and have a high chance to find something illegal going on.

This was San Fransokyo. The gem of the West Coast of the UPN.

They'd need to learn eventually.

Mind made up, I turned and walked away.

As I walked past some of the more recreational piers, I noticed a small gathering of kids by Kawa Park, the local baseball stadium. I walked up, looking over their shoulders, and…

Were those kids... bot fighting? I saw one kid in tattoos and looked to be of asian descent control some robot tank with hammer arms go up against some UFO on treads with a rotating saw blade, controlled by a boy in an afro.

A rotating. Saw blade.

Where are these kids parents?

"Alright, kids, break it up!" called out a cop. He stepped forward, and all the kids booked it, the two bot fighters actually dropping their controls and rushing away.

"Damn kids." The cop sighed, looking to the two bots before he finally noticed me. "Enjoy the show?" he asked with a bit of a scowl.

I shrugged. "Not from around here. Never seen a bot fight." It was the truth.

"You not from around here?" He repeated. "Where ya from?"

"New Hampshire and I moved here…" I shrugged. "Maybe a year ago."

"Ah, well, bot fighting is legal back in most eastern states. Not so much here since it's widespread amongst youth. Really the only way it's legal if it's on TV. Rumble Robots is a fun show, by the way," the officer explained.

"Uhh, yeah." I ventured. "Watched a few."

"So, what have you been up to tonight miss?"

"Oh, you know. Still exploring the city." I was mildly impressed that I had somehow managed to get through this conversation without entirely lying. A novelty in my experience with law enforcement.

"Well, okay. You make sure to get back home before dark miss. Crime's gone down recently, but… you know." He shrugged.

I nodded. "Got it. Good evening, officer." I said, before turning around and offering a little wave with my flesh hand. The officer waved back.

I marched back to the trolley and took a seat by the window. I rested my head against the cool glass as I let my mind wander, already thinking about to what I could say, how I could get them to come into the warehouse.

By the time I reached Cass' shop, the beginnings of a plan were starting to form in my mind.

(X)(X)(X)

"You wanna what?"

It was Wasabi who asked the question three days later, as I laid out a map of the city across the dining room table at Fred's house.

Fred was out getting pizza, Gogo and Hiro were in a class or some such.

"Patrol routes," came the easy answer. "Right now, you guys go out there and just run around wherever you feel like going that particular night. It's not very effective.

"But, Taylor, patrol routes would make us predictable. After awhile, people will learn to just avoid them and do their crimes elsewhere." Honey Lemon protested, sipping at some fruity drink as she looked at the map.

"That's why we lay out a lot of them," I answered, recalling the way it'd been done back in my world. Or the way I'd planned out my jogging routes. "More than we need. Twenty, twenty-five, thirty, different routes, some overlapping with others, and we cycle through them randomly, or pick new ones every week."

"That could work," she admitted, before leaning across the table. "So… how do we plan this?"

"We'd have to pick different starting places," Wasabi answered. "It'll be noticed if the five of us keep starting from the same spot after a while."

I almost protested. Six of them weren't needed for every patrol at all times. Two were more than enough to assess any situation and call for backup if needed.

But I refrained. Stopped myself, reminded myself that they were still… basically playing at this.

It was inefficient, but they didn't need to learn how to run, just yet.

I let them talk, exchange ideas, and prodded with a few of my own, setting up one of the patrol routes to pass right by the docks, where I knew Warehouse 15 to be.

Two weeks. Same shipment, same truck, same time as usual.

It'd just so happen this time they'd have company.

(X)(X)(X)

I waited, counting down the days, the routine. I helped in Cass' shop, going back to my full time hours, taking orders, minding the register. On select nights, when they called, I'd go out with 'the team', Heathcliff and I in the van, trailing after them.

The act of following, or 'shadowing' the team, was honestly little more than a formality. Hiro had stuffed enough machinery in the van that the monitoring equipment had almost unlimited range, or at least enough to blanket the entire city. Even once when the team descended into the subway to answer some call on the police scanner about an on foot pursuit had yielded only the faintest bit of static.

Still, it was best to err on the side of caution. An injury, or a quick bail out might need the car. And the car couldn't exactly help if we were halfway across the city.

The crimes they stopped were… small things. Muggings and fleeing suspects, mainly, when they stumbled on them. Only once had they heard of a murder on the police scanner, but with the suspect long gone and them not being able to do anything to help the dead, they refrained from going.

A small part, a very small part of me had almost sneered at that. At the hesitance. The weakness.

The rest of me remembered that Hiro was just a fifteen year old kid, and the rest of the Big Hero 6 were good hearted people, and then proceeded to violently curse that small cruelty I harbored inside me.

I became familiar enough with the holo-interface that I could fluidly manipulate it with just one hand. Forgoing the use of my clumsy, prosthetic limb entirely while in the van and just relying on the more fluid, quick movements of my real arm.

I watched them as they worked. What little work there was. Gauging their work with the Tinkers I could recall from my world.

Not a one of them would be much of a threat.

Their teamwork hardly made up for it either.

They needed upgrades. Tech with teeth that could actually work for them. Right now, the only one that could even be called to be in a half decent state was Baymax, just by lieu of being a pseudo Alexandria Package with knowledge of martial arts.

That wouldn't be enough for…

For…

I closed my eyes. Taking a breath, reminded of the fact that this was it.

This was the extent… of what they had to face.

Normal humans.

I took a deep, shuddering breath, ignoring Heathcliffe's questioning gaze from the front, and let them… play.

(X)(X)(X)

Like clockwork. Same time, same hour, those men passed by Cass' shop in the morning.

And that very evening the team was making their way through the designated patrol route through the docks.

We, as in, Heathcliffe and myself in the car, were, in no small part due to my suggesting where to park the car, barely a block away from the warehouse, just within range of my insects.

The team was still patrolling, not quite so far but not close either. Fred and Wasabi's icons passing by Tokyo Joe's.

The bugs were listening in on the criminals' conversation, little ants and flies on their backs, shoulders, and clothes. Listening to their words, watching them work, counting money and product.

At the same time, I was paying attention to Hiro and the others.

"How's it going, guys?" I asked through the comms.

"Little boring, actually," Damien replied back to me.

"All good!" Fred added. His icon and camera were going up and down. How he doesn't get motion sickness from all those spring jumps is beyond me.

Gogo, Hiro, Baymax, and Honey Lemon were barely a handful of blocks away to the north and north west.

All in all, they could reach respond to each other in less than three minutes. It'd been Wasabi's idea, a way to make their designated patrol 'section' even more randomized, and their time table more 'efficient'.

"Thought it'd be a bit more exciting than this, huh?" I half asked, half stated, even as I heard the criminals in the building just up the proverbial street from me beginning to load up the truck again for the return shipment.

"Kinda. But quiet's good," Wasabi answered, pausing for a moment to stretch as Fred pulled up ahead.

Someone was stepping into the driver's seat of another truck.

I moved my bugs.

Fred was just within sight of the warehouse. If anyone bothered to look outside, they'd see him, and probably Damien, too, if they were observant enough.

I had almost a dozen black widows and other bugs ready to pounce. Not to cause crippling damage to the whole lot, that'd be too obvious, but to get someone in that warehouse screaming. Causing enough noise to get Fred and Wasabi's attention.

Then, a golden opportunity presented itself.

A truck was backing up, the loud, beep-beep-beep of the warning sound audible even from where I was sitting as they moved a fresh truck to a loading bay to fill it up.

I moved my insects quickly through that warehouse. Dexterously moving bugs to be carried by flies and dropped with pin-point precision even as the oblivious driver tried to swat them away.

I felt like myself again for the first time in a long time.

I felt the smirk tugging at my lips.

Fred and Wasabi were talking, half arguing, debating where they had to go to get to the rendezvous with the team. I only half paid attention to them.

The fire ants were a convenient surprise. A little mound of them tucked away between some rotting wood boards just outside the warehouse.

Surprise or not, however, I hadn't wasted any time in using them when I got here.

As my eyes and ears, and now as the proverbial teeth.

Five of them landed on the driver's clothing. And with careful little movements that kept them unnoticed, they crawled right where I needed them to be.

Before Wasabi and Fred could get further in their argument, the driver felt the, likely horrifying, pain of fire ants biting and chewing on some very sensitive bits.

With a shocked, howling scream, the man's legs tensed right up as he bucked in his seat, slamming down on the gas pedal.

Three seconds later, the truck's ass was sticking out of the half destroyed warehouse wall, at least seven crates cracked wide, wide open.

"What was that?" Wasabi asked, startled out of his conversation with Fred as they both looked down from their perch towards the warehouse where there was currently a lot of shouting.

"Don't know," I lied. "I'm calling Hiro and the others." I was already opening up the comm frequencies. "Don't move until they get there. Might be trouble."

"Someone could be hur-"

"Don't go in without backup!" I demanded, leaving no room for argument by the tone of my voice alone.

Before he could say anything else, I activated the open channel.

"Guys, might be some trouble by Wasabi and Fred's location. They might need backup ASAP."

"On our way!" Hiro answered. He and Baymax were currently flying just a few blocks away.

"Coming," Gogo stoically added, blazing through the park where I'd seen that cop earlier this week.

"Kay, Tay," Honey Lemon cheerfully piped in.

I didn't need Wasabi's camera to see that he was getting closer. I didn't need to see the broken crates and the white powder on the ground, nor did I need to hear Fred exclaim that it was a drug shipment.

I had my bugs.

Just me and my bugs.

Time to learn how to swim, kids.

(X)(X)(X)

As usual, my thanks go out to James for his beta-work.

As I said earlier, the next chapters are gonna be soooo much fun :)

Last edited: Jul 27, 2017

Stories:

\- Complete: - Reconciliation (Worm AU), A knight in the Dark (Naruto/Souls, Oneshot), Lines (Mass Effect, Oneshot), Like Mother like Skitter, Unfit (Naruto)

\- In progress - Outcry: Worm/Dark Souls (Alt Power), Souls of Heroes (Fate/Souls), Legacy Undone (Naruto), Umbram Mortis (Worm AU), No good deed... (Worm AU), Overwatch shorts, Exodus: (Worm/BH6),

-TV-Tropes pages-

Outcry / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, No Good Deed (Fanfic) - TV Tropes , Reconciliation Worm / Fan Fic - TV Tropes , Like Mother Like Skitter / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, Legacy Undone / Fan Fic - TV Tropes (Please contribute if possible :))

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Ld1449

To the last, Kill them all

Aug 11, 2017

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#749

2.6

I watched on the cameras as men in suits came out of the warehouse; Fred and Wasabi approaching at their own paces.

"Hey, Wasabi, I think we got us drugs," I said, trying to inflect a believable measure of surprise into my tone. The men, all Asian in appearance, turned and saw the incoming Fred.

"Wait, Drugs?!" Wasabi said, his voice a high pitched squawk. Apparently, that prompted one of them to pull out a pistol.

"Gun!" I shouted.

It was Fred that reacted first, jumping with pinpoint precision with his suit and landing on the guy, feet to chest.

Even though he hesitated, Wasabi seemed to get the message, and moved immediately to duck into cover behind the rear end of the crashed truck sticking out of the warehouse. "You telling me we just walked in on a drug ring?!" He screeched into his mic. I spied his vitals.

Oh brother...

"Wasabi…" I hissed. "Now is not the time to be hyperventilating!"

"I disagree! This seems like a really good time!" he shot back.

"Awww, yeah, evil doers!" Fredzilla shouted. "Time to reach for the - Whoa!" Fred had to jump away again, avoiding one particular gangster's shots as the others scrambled for weapons.

He landed, and shot out a gout of flame that had the gangster ducking behind cover himself.

I switched to the holo-map. Only a minute and twenty until Baymax got here with Honey Lemon, and Hiro. A little less for Gogo.

One of the gangsters rushed towards Wasabi, a baseball bat in hand, howling at the top of his lungs in Mandarin.

"Is all well, Miss Hebert?" Heathcliffe's droll voice rolled through the inside of the truck, a stark contrast to the gunshots and shouts we could both very clearly hear. I saw him calmly turn the page of his newspaper.

"I'll get back to you on that" I answered back, just as bored.

Wasabi squealed like a little girl as the gangster rounded the corner, coming down with an overhead swing.

With a reflexive raise of his arm, he cut the bat off at the grip, the wooden mass losing most of its force even as it kept going by sheer weight of gravity. Smacking Wasabi in the head.

"OW!" the nerd shouted, rubbing at his head as the gangster looked at the shaft of his bat with befuddled surprise.

Wasabi reacted in that moment, deactivating his plasma blades, grabbing the guy and then… headbutting him.

Now… typically when one headbuts, the idea is to plant your forehead, the toughest bone in the human body, right into your opponent's nose, eyes, teeth, or better yet, right between both eyebrows. You know… softer more vulnerable parts of the face.

Apparently Wasabi didn't get that memo.

With a solid thunk of bone on bone, his forehead struck the gangsters.

"AHHHH!" he hissed, even as he stumbled back into the truck, while the gangster tipped over, luckily knocked out.

"Why does anyone ever use that in movies?" he lamented.

I rubbed my forehead, pinching the bridge of my nose. "Oh my god."

"Taylor, what's going on?" Hiro asked over the comms.

"Wasabi just headbutted a drug trafficker," I mumbled.

"What!? Drugs?!" Honey Lemon squeaked.

I turned my attention inside, watching as the men began to arm themselves. Not all had guns, but there were quite a few that did.

"Who the hell are we dealing with!?" Gogo shouted as I saw her camera feed. She was speeding down the hill, Kawa Park in her sight. Dear lord, she must be going over the speed limit twice over!

"Don't know?" I shrugged, genuinely ignorant. "All Asian looking. Some have suits. Mostly black clothes."

"Triad." I heard Gogo curse.

Huh. So, that's what we were dealing with.

"Big players?" I asked.

"Not as much as the Yakuza here in this city, or Kkangpae down south in Angel City, but more white collar and under the radar," It was, surprisingly Honey Lemon that answered.

Fred was sticking to the ceiling, claws grabbing onto the sheet metal and concrete as he scurried around like a lizard, taking moments to breathe fire onto the criminals, corralling them away from the exits and weapons.

Why was it that Fred seemed to know what he wa doing the most?

"Yo, Plasmatech! Where are you?" I heard Fred shout.

Wasabi seemed to stop fretting over the lump he was gonna have in the morning, turning on his plasma blades and rushing out.

With the fire and the smoke, all eyes were on Fred, allowing Wasabi to close the distance before they really knew what the hell was coming at them.

With a shout, he was slicing rifles and pistols in two, a whirling dervish of blue, cutting flames.

He would use his weapons just to destroy theirs. After, he would deactivate them for the split second it took him to punch them in the face.

A nerd he might be, but Wasabi was still a muscled, six foot something guy that was twice Fred's size. He could pack a damn good punch.

The plasma blades were keeping them at bay, but very few were actually disabled. Most were picking themselves up off the ground after a few seconds to either run or try to fight again.

"Alright… got it!" I watched Fred's camera feed to see him use his claws to tear up a part of the roof and hop down… on a ton of crates, and a dozen plus more suits and some men in scrubs by forklifts. "Lighting it up!" Fredzilla whirled around, using his fire breath to set the crates ablaze.

The drug processing rooms went up like it was covered in gas

He was lucky that I didn't see any major chemicals here. This whole place could have exploded.

The gangsters and workers screamed as they ran…

Right into Gogo.

Rushing at speeds that would make it hard to breathe, the asian girl wall rode a building across the street before jumping straight through a window, smashing into the room.

She made an entrance.

And she was damn quick on the uptake, attacking with insane, brutal speed, tossing those discs of hers with pinpoint accuracy and activating the magnets to bring them back to her.

One of the suits finally seemed to find his nerve, grabbing his gun, only to have a disc hit him dead across the hand a split second before Gogo skated her skinny self right up to him and kicked him in the crotch at what must have felt like mach three.

I'm pretty sure he wanted to be dead before he hit the ground.

At the other side of the warehouse, Baymax, Hiro, and Honey Lemon smashed through a wall, Baymax's rocket punch catching one guy in the chest and his body acting like a human shield for Hiro and Honey, who was tossing her personal equivalent to containment foam, catching the fleeing criminals in gummy, sticky resin.

And… as fast as it had started… it was over.

What criminals they'd caught were still here, the others were hauling ass.

I could hear the police sirens.

"Cops are on their way!" I called.

"Chemistress, put out the fire," Hiro directed. "Then, we gotta get out of here."

With a toss of a few grenades that looked like frost bombs, the fires were put out, and just like that, the team was off, with Fred leaping out of a roof window, Gogo out of the hole Baymax had made, Wasabi and Honey jumping onto rooftops with one of her jumping blobs and Hiro flying off with Baymax.

We waited for a minute, and soon enough, Wasabi and Honey were knocking on the door. I opened it to let them in, and the two sat down, smelling of smoke and gunpowder. They were panting, but I noticed the small hints of a smile on both their faces as Heathcliff drove off.

The braided teen was taking in heavy amounts of oxygen as he took off his helmet.

I offered him a bottle of water. He took it and chugged it.

"We…" He paused, panting. "Just fought drug dealers, didn't we?"

"Drug suppliers, from the looks of it," I mentioned. "Drug dealers are those simple shady guys. This has supplier written all over it." Wasabi was panting, buckling up as the van continued on its course back to the west side of the San Fransokyo peninsula.

I pretended to not catch the look Heathcliff was giving me through the rearview mirror.

(X)

"That… was awesome!" Fred yelled as he came cartwheeling into the garage. Gogo came in shortly after, followed by the massive flying form of Baymax carrying Hiro. Gogo ripped off her helmet and deactivated her mag-wheels and stomped towards Fredzilla.

"What the hell was that?!" she shouted, yelling into Fred's face. "You two could have gotten killed!" She rounded on Wasabi next, who was sitting at the bench. "And you should have pulled him out of there the moment they pulled out their guns on you!" I remained silent.

"Whoa, whoa, how were we supposed to know that warehouse was filled with gangsters!" Wasabi shouted.

"Guys, guys, easy!" Hiro said, getting in between the shorter girl and the giant braided man. "Wasabi's right. You guys came in trying to help people who were in a car accident, only that… those people were drug dealers."

"Suppliers," Gogo hissed. "And Triad, too, given the Mandarin they were shouting." She crossed her arms, leaning against the van as Honey Lemon was brushing herself off. "Do you know what this means? We ticked off a lot of powerful people."

"What's the deal with the Triad?" I asked, speaking up for the first time outside of words of concern and comfort towards Damien on the ride back, and thanks to Heathcliff as the butler went inside when we arrived at the mansion. Gogo rounded on me.

"There are three organized crime rings in San Fransokyo and most of West Coast, all the way up into Alaska and down south to San Diego," Gogo sternly said. "Kkangpae rule down south, especially in Angel City. Yakuza are everywhere up and down the west Coast, with them being predominant here in San Fransokyo and Seattle. But the Triad? They're the white collars. The bribers. The people so high up you mistake them for God." She seemed very agitated on this.

"Ummm, Leiko, is there something the matter? I mean, I'm sure it will be fine! We have each other and we gave those goons what for!" Laura exclaimed brightly. My eyes went on the blonde while Gogo was looking at Laura before she sighed.

"The Triad is the most dangerous. They have the access to people in the government in both Beijing and D.C. In Congress. Police. And how much drugs were in that warehouse, Fred?" Leiko asked, glaring at him. The blond nerd shrugged nonchalantly as he removed his suit as the garage door closed.

"Kinda stacked to the ceiling, I think. It was like a pyramid. Soooo cool to see it all on fire." Fred looked like he was drooling.

"Millions. We took out millions of dollars worth of drugs. Aaaand made a ton of Chinese dudes mad at us." Damien paled, realizing what he and his blond best friend had done.

"And we just took their money and burned it in front of them! Who's to say some paid off policemen doesn't take a shot at us during an emergency! Or some gunmen fire on us during a situation!" Leiko seemed genuinely worried and furious. Gogo breathed hard as she looked around. "Are… none of you guys going to comment on this?"

"I'm totally cool with it. We just gut punched the Chinese mafia followed up with an RKO," Fred declared proudly. "What's there to be worried about?"

"Retribution, idiot!" Gogo snapped. "If we go out and try to save people, they may decide to get a lucky shot at us. Or try to tail us back home or-"

I raised my hand a little, hearing the exchange between Fred and Leiko. Hiro came in between the two and was acting peacemaker with Laura. Damien noticed my raised hand and poked Hiro before the angry Japanese girl and the blonde heir turned towards me.

"She's got a point," I said. "From what I saw, it seemed like a lot of the success tonight was due to how surprised they were in comparison to us. But if they come at us prepared…" I trailed off.

For the first time, it seemed as if the full gravity of the situation was settling on Honey, and even Fred.

"One of the biggest problems that I saw," I drawled, "is that, outside of Baymax and Fred… none of you have much of anything in the way of bullet proof."

Gogo nodded. "That's just to start," She said, looking at her suit. "We're gonna need to upgrade if we have to deal with them."

And for once in my year plus of time staying here in Samehk, me and Leiko Tanaka have come to an agreement.

"Awww yeah!" Fred gushed. "Here we move from tier one to tier two!" He seemed disturbingly giddy at the escalation as he looked up at Baymax. "Ain't that right, big guy?" He grinned, offering his fist. After the mechanical arms removed Baymax's gauntlet, the balloon bot fist bumped.

"Balalalala."

Then, he seemed to get a bit more serious. "So we got off easy, but!" Fred raised a finger. "I think next time, since we are dealing with the 'big bad Triad woooooo~'" He said like a ghost, and I could hear Gogo breathe through her nose. "Okay! Hiro, you going to get on this? Heathcliff will provide the cash."

"I'll get on it tonight. Just need to shower up first. And," the boy was removing some of his armor as he helped the now de-armored balloon bot to his charging station. "Get Baymax charged."

"No."

My voice made the group pause, turning to me in confusion.

"Huh? No? What No?" Fred asked.

I shook my head, looking to Laura, Leiko, and Damien. "Look, Fred is the exception. But you guys have got to stop relying on Hiro to make and fix your gear. It's your gear. It's been… what, a year since you started this? And he's still got almost nothing to defend himself with. All his time is spent fixing and managing your equipment rather than his."

The three 'scientist' students seemed to jerk with the realization, looking to Hiro.

"If your suits are gonna get more and more complex, the amount of maintenance they'd need will keep increasing, too. Right?" I half asked, half stated, knowing it was true from what I could recall with the Tinkers in my own world. "You guys need to upgrade your own work, Hiro has to work on Baymax, Fred's and especially his own gear."

There was silence for a moment.

Then, Fred wrapped one arm around Hiro, the other splayed out like he was showing off a vista in the distance.

"Alright Hiro… here's what I'm thinking for you… Magnetic fields!" He smiled before looking to the door. "Yo Heathcliff!" He called out.

"Yes Master Frederick." Toned the butler over the speaker.

"Order us some pizza. The usual! We're gonna be brainstorming a while. "

"Right away, Master Frederick."

"Come on, Taylor, let's head to the bathrooms and clean up." Laura got behind me all of a sudden and had her hands on my shoulders, pushing me lightly. "There's like, soooo many bathrooms we don't have to worry about the water bill or anything! And-" she was going off again as Gogo followed us.

Stories:

\- Complete: - Reconciliation (Worm AU), A knight in the Dark (Naruto/Souls, Oneshot), Lines (Mass Effect, Oneshot), Like Mother like Skitter, Unfit (Naruto)

\- In progress - Outcry: Worm/Dark Souls (Alt Power), Souls of Heroes (Fate/Souls), Legacy Undone (Naruto), Umbram Mortis (Worm AU), No good deed... (Worm AU), Overwatch shorts, Exodus: (Worm/BH6),

-TV-Tropes pages-

Outcry / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, No Good Deed (Fanfic) - TV Tropes , Reconciliation Worm / Fan Fic - TV Tropes , Like Mother Like Skitter / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, Legacy Undone / Fan Fic - TV Tropes (Please contribute if possible :))

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Threadmarks Interlude: Mr. Cheng New

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Aug 25, 2017

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#860

Interlude: Mr. Cheng

To put it bluntly, Arthur Cheng ran an organized, efficient machine.

Everyone had a job, a role, and everyone performed within that role to perfection, if they wanted to keep their position, or their lives, depending on the nature or egregiousness of their failing.

It was like that in his 'legitimate' business, too. All of his employees knew what they needed to do, and did it.

In short, he was not a man that was used to setbacks.

No… not setbacks, setback was too… inaccurate a word.

Mess.

Yes, that was what it was.

Mess.

He didn't like mess.

Mess brought in cops which he had to clean up. Mess had him making sure people don't talk. Mess had him double checking on his other operations through the city. Mess had him bribing evidence managers and city officials.

Mess had him doing cleanup.

The 'Big Hero Six,' as they liked to be called, had made a mess of his work.

They'd been a novelty when they started over a year ago since that amusing incident at Krei Tech, as minor irritant when they were stumbling onto low level operations he'd had his eyes on.

Now… he was getting particularly… annoyed.

Three months ago, when they stumbled onto his dockhouse, they had burned two point six million dollars worth of drugs. Burned it.

And now, this was the second time they'd hit one of his places.

First the docks, and now a processing apartment across the water in Oakland.

Whether someone talked or they were somehow tracking his shipments, he didn't know. But it was time to deal with this… mess.

Which is why he found himself here, looking woefully out of place standing in a white suit with his black suit body-guards, marching into a Pizzeria that could, at best, be called 'urban' in the middle of Little Tokyo.

Filthy Little Tokyo at that.

One of his men opened the door for him, allowing him a clear view of the other occupants within.

"Cheng," came the rough voice, followed by a smug little smirk.

He already missed Matsudaira.

Far more class. Professional.

Daisuke 'Yama' Yamamoto was little more than an jumped-up, two-bit lieutenant. Massive in size, with a fist that could crush skulls, but little in the way of true cunning.

Smart enough to seize power after Matsudaira's death via surgery 'mishap,' but doing so in the most 'crude' fashion. Blatant power grabs, murders, and intimidation.

A blunt object, if ever there was one.

"Yama," he greeted, stepping forward and taking a seat across from the massive Japanese man who lounged in the massive sofa. Yama was easily twice his size, standing at what must have been bordering seven feet, with a body that was as much muscle as it was fat, wearing jeans and a sports jacket. His arms were riddled with tattoos. There could not be a sharper contrast between the two of them.

"I hear you're having some problems." The Yakuza ouyabun chuckled, offering him up a slice of greasy Pizza, the cheese practically falling off.

Cheng drew a fork and a knife from a nearby napkin, moving to eat, even as Yama took his… fifth slice-? -in his hand.

"So are you," Arthur calmly shot back. "What was that I heard just a week ago? Seventeen arrested at an illegal bot fighting ring?"

"Bah." Yama scoffed. "Half of them weren't even my guys. Just regulars or scrubs wanting to make a quick buck. And the ones that were are practically ants. Nothing really lost." He chuckled, smirking at the smaller man. "Unlike yourself. First, a warehouse full of opium, and then, you lose an entire storage house of guns." He consumed the two slices in one gulp, licking his fingers. Arthur's face was stone, but he wanted to look at his contemporary in disgust. The Triad boss now sported a small smile of his own as he leaned back, setting down his plastic ware.

"And then seven more arrested or stopped from collecting their payments. Two of them without the interference of those children if I recall. Simple policemen who lucked out."

Yama stopped eating his pizza.

"And then an escort service shut down after that lizard from the Six broke up an auction. My oh my, how many rich customers must have been so… disappointed."

That… made Yama's lip curl and eyebrow twitch. Arthur was full on smirking. Yama was a classless dog. Knew nothing of having a poker face and keeping one's emotions in check. But like any other dog, he can be led, given the right words and bait.

"And then there was the Marijuana farm up in Marin County that was exposed by the Six in a raid." Cheng was now sporting a visible, blatant grin, while Yama was growling and baring teeth.

"If you can't collect your payments… how long before other businesses see that they don't have to be afraid of you? The Kkangpae? Maybe some upstart Hispanics? How long before all the money dries up? Face it, Yama," Cheng drawled as he savored his first bite. The pizza was quite good, he had to admit to that, "we're both feeling our wallets just a little bit lighter these days." He then smirked. "You more than me."

"And unlike you," Yama growled, setting down his hand a bit hard on the coffee table beside him, as he leaned forward, glaring into the smaller man's eyes. "I have the full support of my boys back in Tokyo. And all over the damn Union. You? You Triads only look after yourselves. And there's no way your boys in Beijing." He pointed a meaty finger at his face. "Would come to the support of us American born folk. Except mine do." The mountain of a man grinned ear to ear, clearly thinking he was showing his superiority. "Yakuza is family."

Oh, how naive he was. Arthur wanted to laugh. It was because he was born in America, that the Triad invested so heavily in him. No one would suspect a man of his character, a proud Booster and alumnus of Stanford and prominent real estate mogul, of being a Triad Dragon, the Boss of the Chinese Mafia in Northern California.

"Maybe so." Cheng oiled as he cut up another slice of pizza. "But, it is clear that the Big Hero Six is becoming a thorn in both of our sides. And they must be taken care of." He took a bite, swallowing it. "And I'm sure we would love to have them… out of the picture."

"Hmmm. You're speaking my language, Cheng." Yama leaned forward. "I take it you called this parlay for a treaty?"

"I'm not stupid, Yama. Our men hate each other." Arthur mused. "What I propose is a non aggression pact, with the added bonus of the two of us getting rid of the Big Hero Six by whatever means necessary."

"So… I don't go sticking your boys with knives and bullets and your lapdogs don't go biting at our heels til the so called 'heroes' are dealt with. Eh?"

"That's the long and short of it." Cheng nodded. "I don't think either of us needs the police force cracking down on a full on gang war while we have a flying red brick house hovering over our heads." Funny, considering Cheng had many of the police commissioners in his pocket. And a few judges, too.

"Heh." Yama grinned, taking the last slices of pizza and stuffing them on his plate. "Alright. Though don't expect it to last more than a week. I already got my own plans for dealing with these gnats. Whether they involve your cooperation or not, well, that remains to be seen."

Cheng lifted his fork in a half mocking salute. "I always did like your initiative Yama."

Finishing off the last few bites of his pizza, Cheng wiped his mouth with an offered napkin, casually tossing a hundred dollar bill on the table before proceeding to march out, his two bodyguards following after him.

Making it to the car, the Triad boss waited for his men to enter and close the doors, start up the car and begin moving before he spoke.

"Watch that oaf. Closely," he ordered, knowing that he could neither trust Yama to keep his word or to really even be capable of doing as he boasted. Hell. What self respecting boss allowed himself to get cheated in his own territory? In his own gambling pit? By a child? Loud and stupid was all he was.

After a moment's thought, he came to a decision. Better to be proactive and get this done quickly. "Get me in contact with our friends in Europe. If the blunt sledgehammer doesn't work, a dagger will do the job. I know just the one... " He leaned back in his seat, his men sitting across from him.

Then he heard the phone ring, and Arthur perked up. He recognized that ring tone and offered his hand. One of his men handed it to him, not a smartphone but a simple flip phone.

"Hello." He asked. Then he smiled. "Mei." Arthur spoke in english. "Oh? Work is going fine, honey, I'm sorry I'm so late. Just finishing up a deal. You know me, I take offers and deals whenever I can."

Arthur sighed, and the Triad Dragon persona evaporating like a fine mist. "Groceries? Hmmm? Which noodles?"

Then his face scrunched up. "Veggie noodles?" He laughed, smiling as he looked out the window towards the San Fransokyo skyscrapers. "Alright. I'll bring some home."

He snapped his fingers, and one of the men perked up and handed him a notepad. Arthur scowled, opening his hand as the bodyguard fumbled through the door slot, finding a pen. "Okay so… 2% milk… Veggie noodles… keep going… Steak… Cereal… bananas… Mmhmmm. Right… Are the girls still up?" He asked, pausing in writing his grocery list. The sharp eyed man chuckled.

He heard her continue, and Arthur looked out the window as downtown came into view. "I know, Mei. I need to come home earlier. Just… stuff came up, you know how it is."

Seeing a plane up in the sky he got an idea.

"Tell you what… Next week is spring break, right?" He asked. "How about we take the kids somewhere."

Arthur began to think and ponder. "I'll think of something of course. We can't do Hawaii til the summer, sadly…" he did have some business partners in Hawaii too… Two birds with one stone. "How about Tahoe? Okay. We will talk it over when I get home and - oh?" The bodyguards looked back at each other, and one of them shrugged. "Okay. I love you too. Wo ai ni." He hung up and sighed, handing the flip phone to the suit.

"Brothers Market, boys. I've got groceries to buy." Cheng reached for his wallet and handed one of the bodyguards his debit card and the written down list.

Arc 2: Jubilation End

Next:

Arc 3: Evolution

Stories:

\- Complete: - Reconciliation (Worm AU), A knight in the Dark (Naruto/Souls, Oneshot), Lines (Mass Effect, Oneshot), Like Mother like Skitter, Unfit (Naruto)

\- In progress - Outcry: Worm/Dark Souls (Alt Power), Souls of Heroes (Fate/Souls), Legacy Undone (Naruto), Umbram Mortis (Worm AU), No good deed... (Worm AU), Overwatch shorts, Exodus: (Worm/BH6),

-TV-Tropes pages-

Outcry / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, No Good Deed (Fanfic) - TV Tropes , Reconciliation Worm / Fan Fic - TV Tropes , Like Mother Like Skitter / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, Legacy Undone / Fan Fic - TV Tropes (Please contribute if possible :))

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Aug 25, 2017

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Threadmarks Arc 2: End- Interlude: Akande Dubeni New

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To the last, Kill them all

Oct 21, 2017

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#904

Arc 2: End- Interlude: Akande Dubeni

The hum of the private jet was low in his ear as he leaned back in his seat.

His name is Akande Dubeni, President of Majathal Enterprises and a member of its Board of Directors. He was one of the richest men in the southern hemisphere.

"Sir?"

He looked up, and there was Adalene, standing beside him.

"We're almost ready to begin our final descent, sir. Another fifteen minutes and we'll be touching down."

"Thank you, Adalene." He smiled, undoing his seatbelt. "Don't trouble yourself, I'll tell her."

The stewardess knew better than to object. This was his job.

He stood to his full height in the cabin, all six foot-eight inches, shaven head and built with muscle as he marched through the central hallway of the plane towards the rear customized chamber.

He opened the first door, feeling the decontamination process happen in just a few seconds before he opened the next, entering the sealed chamber.

Aadhira lay in her bed, breathing softly with her eyes closed.

He walked closer, and either he was too loud or she could sense his presence in some way, because before he reached her, she opened those green eyes of hers and smiled.

"We're almost ready to land." Akande smiled back. "I would rather you not be scared by the plane's landing knocking you out of your rest."

She held out a hand, and he took it. "I am not made of glass, my husband."

So many days she seemed like she was.

Nevertheless, it was good to hear her say it.

He pulled up his seat, taking it beside her as he smiled. "Are you excited for the seminar?"

She chuckled somewhere in her throat. "Nervous, actually. It's been so long since I've been in front of a crowd… and I'm so sick now. I'm afraid they'll be disappointed."

"Never," he reassured.

The intercom beeped.

"Sir, Ma'am. We're beginning the descent into San Fransokyo International Airport, so please make sure you're seated with your seatbelts. That means you, Mr. Akande."

Aadhira laughed. She always laughed at that. So he always told the pilot to say it.

(X)

The time from their landing to the Bilton Hotel was short, just as he wished. He'd already made all the arrangements well ahead of time and every single one of the people he'd hired conducted themselves with the utmost professionalism. Their bags were taken, her medical condition was seen to and accommodated, and the hotel suite was to his exacting specifications for all her needs.

Aadhira protested and tried to assure him he didn't need to trouble himself so much for her, but he would leave nothing to chance. It had been the first time in almost a decade since his love was deemed healthy enough to leave their home country, and he wanted nothing to happen to her.

The seminar was not for another week. He wasn't wholly comfortable with her being away from home and her physicians so long. But she wanted to see the city.

So that's what they did.

For the first two days, he took her to all the places she wished to see. Took her through this remarkable melting pot of two distinct cultures even and saw her smile like she did when they were both younger.

On the second day… He discovered something interesting.

(X)

"You haven't told me where you're going."

"If it all works out as I hope, it will be a nice surprise, I promise," he answered, sitting at the back of the car. He listened to the hum of the electric engine as he pressed his phone to his ear, watching the colorful street signs passing him by, filled with japanese characters he could barely read.

"Oh… and if it doesn't work out?" was her amused reply.

"Then I will return with flowers and chocolates, begging for forgiveness for having spent a fruitless day away from you."

"As long as they're Swiss chocolates from that one popular chocolate factory. Giradeiri, I think they're called?"

"I won't settle for anything less," he assured.

The driver pulled to a stop, parking along the side of the road. A moment later, the man ran around to his side and opened the door.

"I must go, my love. I will speak to you when I'm on my way again."

"Alright, Akande. Bye."

He hung up, stepping out of the back seat and tossing a look up at the sign.

"The Lucky Cat Cafe?" It even had an overgrown cat lamp framing the words and smiling down at the passersby.

He eyed the curb, finding its edge yellow. "Go," he told the driver, stepping past him. "Park somewhere legal. I will call you once I am done here."

"Right away, sir." The man offered a stiff bow at the waist rather than a nod.

The driver rushed to the driver's seat and pulled out as Akande marched inside.

It was only then that he noted he truly should have dressed a bit more casually. At least… more casual than his usual casual wear.

Standing at his height with his white buttoned shirt, black dress pants and black shoes, he rather stood out in comparison to the beach shorts, jeans, and T shirts being sported by the other patrons of the establishment. He looked like an NBA All-Star standing amongst normal people.

Regardless, he marched up to the cashier.

It was a girl. Akande had to take a second look at her.

She was young. A thin slip of a child with dark hair and a red bandanna over her head, a pair of glasses framing brown eyes. The picture perfect young cashier at her first job.

At least, she should be.

But the way she looked at him, the very nature of her stance betrayed something far less callow. He'd been in board room meetings with the most cutthroat businessmen in the world with stares less icy. Almost as if she was sizing him up

She smiled, a stiff thing. More the smirk of a cat to the cornered the mouse than a welcoming grin.

"Welcome to the Lucky Cat," she said, pulling up a notepad. "What would you like?"

He noticed just then, almost missed it due to her black gloves. But the small shine of polished plastic and the thin, micro screws along the inside of her wrist to hold the hand in place as it moved.

A prosthetic.

"I'm actually looking for someone," Akande answered, hiding his slight alarm as he smiled back at her. "I was told that I could find a Hiro Hamada here."

When she looked at him, he could swear the room grew just a bit colder.

It seemed, however, he was overheard; in that moment, an older woman, one who had been tending the tables, walked over, carrying tray held in her hands. "Umm, hello, I'm Hiro's aunt. Cassandra. What's this about?"

"Ahh." He smiled at the woman. "So you are Cassandra? I've heard good things about you. Well-" He reached into his back pocket, fishing out his wallet and handing the woman his card. "-my name is Akande Dubeni. I understand Mr. Hamada is something of a prodigy in the fields of robotics, yes?"

"Umm." She looked at his card, reading it as she answered. "Yes, but-"

"I have something of a business proposal to make to Master Hamada regarding his Baymax model of machines. If you could call him, I would be most appreciative."

"Sure. I can give him a cal-" She paused. "Oh. But he's in class right now. He won't be out for at least another hou-"

"I will wait." He smiled. "I did, after all, arrive unannounced." He reached into his shirt pocket, pulling free a stack of hundred dollar bills.

Without preamble, he handed it to the stunned Cass.

"For your, and Master Hamada's time." He smiled.

"I-I couldn't… I… I-it's just a phone call." Cass protested, moving to give it back.

Gently, he pushed the money away. "I insist," he said. "This matter is very important to me personally. Take the money."

Stunned and more than a little dazed, Cassandra protested a few more times before finally being convinced, rushing off to call Hiro from the land line.

"Would you like a seat?"

The question was polite enough, but the dark haired girl stared at him as though she was deciding the best place to stick a knife.

"I'm sorry," Akande drawled. "I did not catch your name Miss…"

"Hebert," the girl answered, before gesturing him to a booth. "Please."

He allowed himself to be led to the booth. The girl was shorter than he was. Most people were. Soon enough though, she returned to deal with the register. Cassandra returned momentarily and asked him if he'd like something to eat or drink.

He asked her to surprise him.

Around thirty minutes later, he was offered a full lunch, with a dessert, coffee, and drink.

Akande had five star chefs in his home and his homeland and most of the time when he traveled. By comparison, Cass' cooking was a humble thing. Humble, but respectable, filling, and it had that little touch of 'home cooked' so few places could truly capture.

When he was just finishing the last of the desert, he noticed the bright red, signature San Fransokyo Trolley making a stop at the other side of the street across from him.

Now, typically this wouldn't be enough to catch his eye, of course. He had seen many of these signature ferries in the last two days. The curious chime they made on each stop was more background noise than anything by now.

But this one had the Pillsbury Dough Boy mascot stuffed in its door.

A big white fluffy thing that was currently wedged rather firmly between the door edges, with a black haired teenager doing his damndest to pull it out by its marshmallowy arms.

Akande stared.

It wasn't until Cassandra left through the front door and half jogged across the street towards him that Akande realized just who exactly had arrived.

Between the two of them, they managed to yank the marshmallow bot out of the red cart.

As they spoke, marching in, Akande reached over and took the first sips of his coffee to finish his meal.

When Hiro walked into the bakery, Cass and the machine marched in behind him… well… one marched, the other sort of waddled. Immediately, she pointed in his direction.

As soon as Hiro noticed him, Akande offered a wave as Hiro went slack-jawed.

"Hello, there."

Cass seemed to march over the dazed young man, hands on his shoulders. Almost protectively. "Hiro, this is Mr. Duh-Benee?" Cass said, cringing at her own pronunciation of his name. The words tripped clumsily off of her tongue.

"Dubeni," he corrected gently, before gesturing to the seat across from him. Dimly, he remembered that this was her restaurant, not his to be inviting people like he owned it.

Cassandra looked to another part of the restaurant. "I gotta go, Hiro. Call me if you need me, ok?"

"Yeah, sure thing, Aunt Cass," was the boy's dazed reply.

Akande watched her leave.

"You must be Master Hamada?" He smiled.

"Oh. My. God." There was a smile spreading across Hiro's face stretching from ear to ear. "Akande Dubeni! You- You're the CEO of Majathal Enterprises. You and Mrs. Dubeni basically invented the modern programing platform for AI!"

"My wife is the true genius between the two of us, I assure you." He smiled. "But I have heard many things about you. At your young age, you already possess a degree, are pursuing another as we speak today, and have developed and distributed a medical care machine that is highly sophisticated in both design and software capabilities. "

He saw Hiro's eyes dim, becoming a little sad. "It… it was my brother Tadashi's design… his idea. I just… finished it."

Ahh.

"I understand. Regardless, you accomplishments, at your age, are significant." He cast an eye towards the large robot, standing up. "I assume this is the prototype model?"

"Uhh, yeah. This is Baymax," Hiro said.

"Hmmm." Akande stood to his full height, noting the machine was taller than him.

Eying the machine for a moment, Akande turned to the boy.

"What are his capabilities?"

"Scanning," Baymax suddenly chimed in, a faint blue line appearing from his chest and overlapping Akande's body.

"Patient is a forty-three year old male, DNA reflects a sixty-seven percentile south african origin, Eastern European DNA, twenty seventh point four percentile, and Mongolian DNA within the sixth percentile. Patient is in excellent physical condition. Results however suggest a lack of Zinc. Suggestion Dietary supplements or-" a picture appeared over his chest. "Oysters."

"Impressive," Akande complemented with a laugh. "And he specializes in personal patient care."

"Yeah. The design was mainly to be a nurse bot. That's why he's inflated. Makes him soft and… huggable."

"Is he for sale?"

Immediately, just by Hiro's face, he had his answer.

"I- No. Baymax is-"

"I understand," Akande interrupted, holding his hand up to forestall the protest. He thought for a moment.

"Hiro, you are aware, that my wife Aadhira is holding a seminar next week, yes?"

"Uhh, yeah."

"Do you have tickets for the event?"

"Are you kidding?" The youth half laughed. "That was sold out almost within the hour. You couldn't steal tickets to Mrs. Aadhira's seminar.

Akande smiled. "You won't have to resort to that. I would like you to attend. At my personal invitation. You, your Baymax, and a plus one." Akande's voice was smooth and accented as he crossed his massive arms. "I will personally add your name to the list of VIP's of the Stanford University. And while Baymax may not be for sale, perhaps, if all goes well we can make other arrangements, yes?"

"B-Business? With me?"

"We will discuss it further, I assure you, at the seminar." Akande nodded. "A talent like yours could crawl, fight, and claw its way to the top. But there is no need for that, I feel." He felt nostalgic saying that. "Your potential must be honed and perfected. With my resources, Baymax won't be just known and used in the UPU." He then stood up reaching into his wallet before pulling out his card. "It will be known worldwide."

Hiro seemed star-struck. It was the girl, dark haired and dark eyed who looked at him like an insect to dissect. The question was clear in her gaze.

What's the catch?

She would be disappointed if she wished to find an ulterior motive.

Now that he cared to notice the distance, he was surprised she was able to eavesdrop from so far away at all. The girl must have excellent hearing.

Akande adjusted the sleeves of his shirt, smiling once more at Hiro and Baymax before leaving the restaurant, offering a wave towards the still busy Cassandra and calling his driver.

Minutes later, he was driving through the streets of downtown, towards Little Tokyo.

He called Aadhira. Checking in on her, listening to her voice before they let each other go. Leaving him to prepare for another call.

He closed the divider window, cutting off the sight and hearing of his driver from him before Akande heard his… other phone ring.

A custom thing. Nearly impossible to track, with built in countermeasures against any kind of hack, recorder and voice scrambler.

He picked it up on the first ring. "Speak."

He could almost hear the machine scrambling his words through the other end, the faint whisper of a guttural, static laced growl.

"Is this… Headhunter?"

Akande looked at his watch, the screen changing to show the caller ID, the safety of the line and detecting if anything was being used to track him.

"This line is secure, Mr. Cheng," he assured. "As I said… speak."

Last edited: Aug 7, 2019

Stories:

\- Complete: - Reconciliation (Worm AU), A knight in the Dark (Naruto/Souls, Oneshot), Lines (Mass Effect, Oneshot), Like Mother like Skitter, Unfit (Naruto)

\- In progress - Outcry: Worm/Dark Souls (Alt Power), Souls of Heroes (Fate/Souls), Legacy Undone (Naruto), Umbram Mortis (Worm AU), No good deed... (Worm AU), Overwatch shorts, Exodus: (Worm/BH6),

-TV-Tropes pages-

Outcry / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, No Good Deed (Fanfic) - TV Tropes , Reconciliation Worm / Fan Fic - TV Tropes , Like Mother Like Skitter / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, Legacy Undone / Fan Fic - TV Tropes (Please contribute if possible :))

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To the last, Kill them all

Nov 7, 2017

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#965

3.1

The door opened with a pneumatic hiss into a rather expansive basement.

"Down the stairs, Miss," Heathcliff drawled.

I had already figured that out, been listening to the conversations down there for the last five minutes while walking up here, too.

"Thanks, Heathcliff," I said with a nod, stepping forward and down towards the basement, where I could now physically see the sparks from some welding tool or other rather than just hear them through my array of insects.

Marching down into the workshop-slash-basement under Fred's house, I wasn't the least bit surprised to find Hiro, Gogo, and Wasabi hard at work.

"Hey, Taylor." It was Hiro that greeted me, smiling, with a pair of black welding goggles protecting his eyes.

"Working on upgrades?" I asked, already knowing the answer. I even had a vague idea of what exactly they were working on.

"Oh yeah." Hiro grinned. "Check this out!"

Lifting what I recognized to be the clawed glove of Fred's suit, Hiro put it on, then stood and walked towards a nearby range, before he held it out.

The five pointed claws that I'd seen Fred use to climb onto concrete walls shot out like bullets, ripping into the hard plastic dummy at least a solid inch.

Something like that seemed outright lethal, and I didn't think Hiro would have had it in-

They started to release a visible smoke.

Ahh.

Hiro smiled, beaming towards me. "I can make them release smoke, or tear gas."

"The others are gonna need gas masks, then," I pointed out.

"Way ahead of ya!" Wasabi was the one who answered this time, holding up his protective visor and pressing a button near the ear. With a quick, electrical whir, a faceplate sprang out of the side plating to cover where his nose and mouth would be.

"Getting these integrated into everyone's suit helmets." He grinned. "And after this, I'm gonna work on some shielding tech." Wasabi then indicated towards a tablet. I walked over, inspecting it, and saw an animation of Wasabi's gauntlets springing forth his plasma blades, before the shape turned more oval and sketched a design akin to a shield of some kind to cover his front and side.

"Plasma shielding?" I asked.

"Yeah, they won't take much punishment, but some is better than none." Wasabi said. He leaned over his workbench and began working on the headpiece again.

I eyed the plasma animation for a while longer. I'd look at the notes and equations, but they were gonna fly straight over my head. I got the distinct feeling that was going to be a running theme, around here.

Looking over to Gogo, who was similarly working on her own gear over a workbench, I called out to her, "So, what're you working on?"

She didn't answer, just pointed to the far wall to our left.

One of her discs was there, attached to a target, where I noticed the faint traces of electrical burns.

"Taser," was her short statement. "Need a bit more stopping power."

Good call. For both of them.

Damien needed some extra protection to close the distance, and Leiko needed to drop her targets and move on to keep up her speed.

There was the sound of a door opening, and a moment later, I heard Laura calling from atop the stairs.

"We're back!"

She marched down with Fred, bags of burgers in hand.

"Alright!' Fred cheered as he caught sight of me. "The whole team is here!"

Before Fred could get started on whatever he was about to say, Laura spoke up.

"Hey, Hiro-" the blonde gushed with a megawatt bright smile, "-what's this I'm hearing about the Akande Dubeni dropping by the Lucky Cat, looking for you!?"

Immediately, Hiro's smile lit up the room as I felt my lips curling into a frown.

"Can you believe it!?" Hiro seemed to be just about ready to squeal like a schoolgirl at a boyband concert. "Mr. Dubeni invited me to the seminar next week!"

He might be ecstatic, but I didn't trust it. Or him.

Everything I dug up on the internet pointed to Akande genuinely being a legitimate business man. He was the face of the company, while his wife was the brilliant, frail inventor that had revolutionized modern AI tech nearly twenty five years ago.

But things like this didn't just 'happen.' People didn't drop onto your lap with money and good intentions for nursing bots. He was up to something.

Everyone with power has skeletons in the closet, after all.

"Any idea where he'd be staying?" I decided to ask. I'd searched online, but there were dozens of possible options, and going to search each one individually was horribly ineffective.

Oh, for the days when my range could be measured in whole city blocks…

"The Hanamura? The Hanbei? The Ritz? Take your pick." Laura shrugged, beginning to unpack the food.

Absentmindedly, I grabbed the offered burger. The fries were thick cut and fried to a perfect crisp. I'd have to ask her where she got these later.

"You ok there, Tay?" Wasabi seemed to have caught the look on my face. I supposed years of being a worrywart made him one of the more observant members of the group.

"I don't trust it," I decided to say, looking to Hiro. "Not the offer, and not him. People don't come with an open hand and good will, Hiro. There has to be a catch."

He looked sad enough I might have kicked his puppy. I might have even felt bad. Might.

"Taylor. I'm not an idiot. I read all the fine print before I sign anything, but Mr. Dubeni… I mean. Have you read half of the work he's done? Philanthropy, charity, business ventures he made happen. Disability treatments in Africa." And he wasn't wrong. One of the key moments I had found in my research was Dubeni's exoskeleton research helping those of frail constitution and body be able to function and walk around like normal human beings. It more or less removed the need for walkers or wheelchairs, allowing those who would be too weak or crippled to walk on their own two legs.

"I get it." I held up my hand to forestall any more protests or elaborations. "I'm just telling you to go in with both eyes open. You can like the guy all you want after you make sure everything's on the up and up."

"What do you think the business deal's gonna be about, though?" Gogo chimed in, not looking up from her work.

"Something regarding Baymax probably," I replied.

"Maybe you're being too cautious. Maybe he wants to bring those Baymax models to Africa," Fred said, setting himself on a couch with a fisfful of fries stuffed in his mouth. "To help those people."

"Whatever he does want, just... sleep on it. Okay?"

Hiro let loose a sigh. I had to take a moment of self-reflection to remember that if anyone had told me to think before I met my idols, back in the day, I would have been annoyed, too.

"Okay, I will," he finally said.

I offered a nod and kept eating my burger. After a moment, I noticed Honey Lemon go over to her own work desk she made, with countless glass tubes and machinery used to create her chemicals and the countless solutions she had stored in vials. Laura was opening a holographic screen and looking up articles and theses on…

Hmm.. That looked interesting. Standing up and walking over, I looked at the display.

"What you working on?" I asked, stepping beside the blonde.

"Oh! Hey, Tay So, I thought to myself, what can I do to help out the team in case things get dicey? You know, after the whole warehouse incident," Laura said with her wide smile. "So, I'm going to make a salve …" She had an additional holoscreen to the side as she tapped away. "That can help patch up wounds."

"In case of injury."

"Yep! Well, it's not some miracle heal wondergel." Laura shrugged. "More like a super strong bandage. I've seen it applied in the military, and I have to craft my own since, well… Military grade is pretty tough to get. Fred can only get us so much, ya know?"

She made a good point. I looked at the holo, the blown up footage of how the chemical bonded to skin and stymied bleeding.

"This is a great idea."

I didn't realize I'd spoken aloud, til Laura turned to me with a smile. "I know, right! Can't believe I didn't think of it sooner."

"How long before you get a working prototype?"

"Not sure. A few weeks? Maybe a few months," she answered. "Gotta figure out the right formula. That takes trial and error. And trial and error takes time."

More stopping power for Gogo, more long range support capabilities for Fred, the ability to close the distance safely for Wasabi, and now Honey was developing a way to patch up injuries.

'They're starting to shape up,' I thought.

"You know what we need?" Fred suddenly said as he finished his burger and got up from the couch.

He sprang up to his feet before… Posing. Hitting the air. Looking like he's making an absolute mockery of Tai Chi.

The fuck was he doing?

"We need to learn Karate! Martial arts. The skills to take bad guys down with our bare hands!"

I… had to ask.

"Why… are you standing on one leg with your arms impersonating an antenna piece?"

Fred looked at me like I was the strange one.

And that was saying something.

Then, literally hopping on one foot to face me fully, Fred stayed in his… ridiculous pose.

"You've never seen Tyke Kwon Do?"

"That a comic book or something?"

"Old movie," Gogo answered without even looking up from her work.

Ahh.

I looked at Fred again. "And… that is the fighting stance he used in the movie?"

"Wax on, wax off."

Wax wha-

The thought was cut off.

Because Fred jumped.

It wasn't a real kick. Not really, wasn't close enough, and Fred was just doing it for show. My mind knew this.

My reflexes apparently didn't care for the distinction, honed after a quarter of my life was spent dealing with the worst examples of humanity.

My organic hand whipped right out, dropping the bag filled with fries to the floor before my bare fingers grabbed Fred's sneaker, holding the surprised boy's leg in place as I stepped forward. I hooked my foot around his grounded ankle put my other hand behind his neck and yanked.

Before anyone even knew what happened, Fred had flipped end over end and was now flat on his back, staring up at me as I just stopped myself from following up with a kick. Or a grapple to snap one of his limbs.

It was quiet enough you could have heard a pin drop.

I cleared my throat, somewhat awkwardly. He was staring at me, dazed, brain still trying to catch up with what the hell had happened.

"You're right, Fred," I finally said, looking down at him. "You guys do need to learn some hand to hand."

And a smile wide enough to split his face was my answer.

Stories:

\- Complete: - Reconciliation (Worm AU), A knight in the Dark (Naruto/Souls, Oneshot), Lines (Mass Effect, Oneshot), Like Mother like Skitter, Unfit (Naruto)

\- In progress - Outcry: Worm/Dark Souls (Alt Power), Souls of Heroes (Fate/Souls), Legacy Undone (Naruto), Umbram Mortis (Worm AU), No good deed... (Worm AU), Overwatch shorts, Exodus: (Worm/BH6),

-TV-Tropes pages-

Outcry / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, No Good Deed (Fanfic) - TV Tropes , Reconciliation Worm / Fan Fic - TV Tropes , Like Mother Like Skitter / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, Legacy Undone / Fan Fic - TV Tropes (Please contribute if possible :))

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Nov 7, 2017

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To the last, Kill them all

Nov 24, 2017

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#1,020

3.2

A stroll through downtown.

Not sure when or why it happened, but the simple act did seem to clear my head quite a bit. Perhaps it was how foreign everything looked to my eye. To these people, this was just "San Fransokyo," as it had always been. To me, it was… so very, very strange. Just the simple things like the damn street signs and products being sold. It was like going to Chinatown in New York or something everywhere you went. The technology that blended seamlessly with the background was like looking at a B-rate Sci-Fi movie about the near future back in my home, only it was real, here. Real, capable of being mass produced, and as common as toasters or microwave ovens.

I found myself marching past a sports bar eying the basketball game on the multitude of screens. Wasabi and Gogo were practically drooling over this game, yesterday. The Warriors vs the… I didn't know who. Never was much into sports.

As I walked, I listened to a million and one conversations, processing each and every one. Most were nothing. Talks about the game, some gossip or other from and about people I didn't know, arguments and debates. All of it filtered through the bugs in the envelope of my range that kept growing bit by bit every day. Perhaps one day I'd be back to… top form.

Not to my old self. Never that.

I looked up, finding a street sign.

'Lil Tokyo.'

I'd been here long enough to know that there in the city, the three major districts were West Saigon, Seoulville, and Lil Tokyo. These were where you wanted to go get the authentic good food of each ethnic group. And of course, where most of the gangs would mark their territories.

Had to give the Triad credit. They knew how to hide it better.

I listened in on conversations from the apartments going on around me as I took a seat on the bench, closing my eyes and listening as my hands were in my hoodie pocket.

Couple fighting? Old couple watching a sitcom, young girl eating ice cream and crying by herself, another family above that and…

… Ah. There.

I stopped, a bit more of my attention focusing itself on some men in an apartment above.

Yakuza.

Not Triad, of course.

After four hits on some of their larger, more lucrative operations, they'd wised up, went underground. They knew they were being watched, they just hadn't figured out how. So they were lying low.

But not before cutting a deal with the Yakuza.

Now, the city's "blue collar" criminals seemed to be actively looking for Hiro and the others, all the while still maintaining their day to day. Dog fighting rings, illegal brawls. Bot fights. And from what I could hear, running an "escort service."

Had to take 'em down, now.

Rachelle would never forgive me if I left a dog fighting ring running.

…

Or was it Rachel? Or Renee?

Fucking hell…

As I listened to the discussion, slowly, an idea began to take shape in my head.

(X)

It was Gogo, unsurprisingly, who asked the question. "A what?"

"A bot fighting tournament," came the easy answer as I scrolled through a news article on one of Fred's pads.

"Why?"

"Supposedly, there's a big one, and from what I hear, Yakuza like to make money off of them. We could use it to hit more Yakuza. And if it's big enough, we might even nab someone higher than a street grunt."

"How in the hell do you know about Yakuza bot fights or that they're running a 'big one'?" Gogo asked, glaring at me with arms crossed.

I could see the others were curious too.

The lie came easily enough.

"One of the guys that frequents the shop invited me as a date," I said.

Hiro, who was drinking a soda, promptly choked on it, receiving pats on the back, courtesy of Baymax.

"Oh - is he cute?" was Honey Lemon's immediate question with a smile.

"Sure. If you like tall and covered in tattoos." I shrugged. "But not interested. Anyway. If what he says is true, we can actually go after this big bot fighting thing and hit the Yakuza before they try to go underground like the Triad."

"I like it!" Fred cheered. "They'll never be expecting us, and if we grab some of their big bosses, imagine what it'll do for our reputation!" He was practically gushing.

"Well…" Wasabi nervously scratched his head. "It… beats going round in circles patrolling, I guess."

Gogo didn't look like she fully bought my story but I hardly expected any less. "So, where and when is this thing?"

"Tomorrow, some place called Zhan Lu's fishery or something."

"To the Google!" Fred cried, dramatically raising a single finger into the air before rushing over to a nearby computer.

"Okaaay, so." Fred murmured as he scrolled through search results fast, the few of us gathering behind him to see the screen. "You're talking about Zhan Lu's Catch. It's a fishery based in the harbor onnn… there. Northside by the bridge."

"That's near the suburbs. And just north of Chinatown," Gogo pointed out. "Why are the Yakuza using a Chinese business for their activities?"

"Its cheap, they've probably got a racketeering thing going on the side, and whoever owns the property owes them something. Take your pick," I answered.

"How would you know?" Gogo asked with an inquisitive glare,

I rolled my eyes. "Educated guess."

"And mob movies!" Fred added. "Lots and lots of mafia movies… You saw a few at the hospital, right?"

"A few." This lie came easy too.

"Then it's settled! We need to crash this place." Fred was grinning.

"Cops don't go around Chinatown all that much, probably because of the triad paying them off." Gogo told us darkly. "If we go in to hit Yakuza, we can't expect a fast response from the cops."

I shook my head. "Wait a minute. You're saying Triad has a stake in Chinatown?"

"Yeah, of course," she said. "Triad are Chinese. Of course they've got their eyes on the biggest collection of Chinese in the city. The rest is mostly Japanese and Caucasian and small pockets of other Asians."

"And yet, the Yakuza are operating in there… on their territory… without any kind of reprisal?"

That, made everyone pause.

"You're right, that is weird," Hiro said, blinking.

'Not weird, it's a trap.' I already knew, of course, but I wanted them to put the pieces together themselves.

"We'll ask 'em as we're punching them in the face!" Fred whooped, before rolling back in his wheeled chair towards the armory.

And that seemed to settle it for the team, and I had to struggle not to slap my hand across my forehead.

"Alright, let's get our new gear checked and set." Hiro, too, was smiling, apparently excited to test the upgrades as much as any of the others. "We've got a big day tomorrow."

(X)

Tomorrow came fast. Before I even knew it, the day was done and I was riding with Heathcliff in the car, headed across town towards the fishery, Wasabi and Honey Lemon in the back while the rest of the team used their own faster means of travel.

"Right. So, Hiro, what's the plan then?" Honey Lemon called

"First, we scout the building. Windows, maybe some bugs and Baymax's scanning."

For the briefest of moments, I thought, stupidly, that Hiro had somehow discovered my abilities, then I remembered what a 'bug' actually was in this context.

"Once we get their numbers and a good layout of the place, we go in, all of us from different directions."

"Sounds good to me." I heard Wasabi say, cracking his knuckles as the smile spread across his face, double checking the recently modified plasma emitters on his forearms.

Whether he knew it or not, I suspected he was getting addicted to this. The rush, the thrill.

Regardless, that was a subject for another day. "Doesn't sound good to me," I called.

"Huh? Why?" Hiro's voice crackled over the radio.

"The last part. Spreading out," I answered easily. "Sure, you get five different entry points and some more confusion, but no one around to watch each other's backs if something goes wrong. Put the teams two by two, instead. You and Baymax - though that was a given - and the other two are for the ones that can best compensate the other's ability." I held up my fingers as I counted them off. "Plasmatech with Chemistress, Fredzilla with Tracer." I had to get them used to calling each other by their cape names. Sure, they mostly used nicknames, but how many Six foot something black guys went by the name of Wasabi in the freaking country?

"Why those matchups?" Laura asked behind me.

"Your chemicals can make smoke bombs, flash bangs, sleeping powder, and anything in between to give Plasmatech enough cover and support to close the distance safely and cover his back. Not to mention that if anyone gets in close to you, you've got the best close range combatant just a shout away from you. And people will be focused so much on Fredzilla's fires that Tracer can act with almost complete impunity, given her speed."

"Oh… that makes sense." She nodded.

"You've been thinking about this a while, huh?" I could almost hear Hiro's smile.

For about fifteen minutes. Did that count as 'A while'?

I shrugged. "It's my job, ain't it?"

Once again, I pretended not to notice the look out the corner of Heathcliff's eyes.

(X)(X)(X)

The fishery smelled like fish.

Not to point out the obvious, but… really. It reeked of the stuff.

Heathcliff and I were parked just at the edge of my range from the place, just close enough for me to have the full building in my envelope. Heathcliff wanted to be further out, but the age old argument of, "Might need the car for emergency evacuation," swung the debate in my favor.

Even so, with the distance and the metal walls of the car, and the padding and the tech and all the air fresheners you could imagine, the damn car smelled like fish.

I hated this smell...

I was going to have to burn these clothes… all of these clothes. And the smell wouldn't come out of my hair for weeks, I just knew it.

Maybe it wasn't just the fish in this ugly part of San Fransokyo, but rather how...familiar it felt.

It reminded me too much of the Bay. My Bay.

…

Regardless, Zhan Lu's was a massive storage house, and inside I could see through my bugs the guards and feel the heat of the lights on their chitinous bodies. Almost out of reflex, I looked for Lung or Oni-Lee, before realizing what I was doing and shaking my head at the thought. There were no dragons or cheating suicide bombers, here. There were thugs. Thugs with pipes, pistols, switchblades, and small arms. The only real threat was a couple of guys with Uzis and automatic shotguns that could rip through the thin layer of body armor Wasabi, Fred, and Gogo had so far integrated in their suits

Why Honey Lemon hadn't done so yet was an argument I was going to revisit all over again, tonight. The only reason I wasn't worried was because some convenient Black Widows ready to strike were already in place.

On the holo map, I saw the icons of the Six get into position. Gogo and Fred were gonna go in from the front, Fred busting in. The fishery's east wall went into the water, but Wasabi and Honey Lemon would go through there using Honey Lemon's adhesive C4 like gel, while Hiro and Baymax would bust in from the back, where the boats were stored. The retracted door would be like cardboard, with Baymax flying in like a missile.

"How many are you picking up, Baymax?"

"There are approximately sixty seven individuals within the structure."

That sounded about right to my ears. Now all they needed to do was-

"One of them has a cold…" Baymax suddenly continued. "Another is suffering from the early stages of arthritis, a third has-"

"It's ok, buddy, I don't think we need the medical files and history. Where are they?"

"Forty six individuals are gathered near the eastern end of the building, the remaining seem to be patrolling the perimeter."

"Okay. You guys ready?" I asked, looking at the map. Gogo and Fred were at the northern edge of the wharf with a long hill road, leading down to the fishery. They were in an alleyway and out of sight from the guards. Wasabi and Honey Lemon were behind our van, ready to engage and sprint towards the east side once Gogo and Fred had the front set of guards distracted. Hiro and Baymax were less than a block away on the northern end.

I received a litany of confirmations from the others.

I locked my eyes in on the building, but I spread my radius, feeling all the bugs as I listened in. Outside of the rave and the bot fights going on inside the fishery, I didn't spy anyone else in the nearby buildings waiting to swoop in as an ambush.

"Okay, guys… Make it loud and make it fast!"

(X)(X)(X)

Just outside of Taylor's range, however, standing at the foot of a water tower, staring down the road towards the fishery, was a person. Staring into the holo displays along his forearm, he watched as his drone's camera picked up the approaching team of heroes.

Headhunter's smirk was hidden inside his helmet.

"Let us see what you are made of, then."

(X)(X)(X)

Happy thanksgiving :)

Stories:

\- Complete: - Reconciliation (Worm AU), A knight in the Dark (Naruto/Souls, Oneshot), Lines (Mass Effect, Oneshot), Like Mother like Skitter, Unfit (Naruto)

\- In progress - Outcry: Worm/Dark Souls (Alt Power), Souls of Heroes (Fate/Souls), Legacy Undone (Naruto), Umbram Mortis (Worm AU), No good deed... (Worm AU), Overwatch shorts, Exodus: (Worm/BH6),

-TV-Tropes pages-

Outcry / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, No Good Deed (Fanfic) - TV Tropes , Reconciliation Worm / Fan Fic - TV Tropes , Like Mother Like Skitter / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, Legacy Undone / Fan Fic - TV Tropes (Please contribute if possible :))

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Nov 24, 2017

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To the last, Kill them all

Jan 1, 2018

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#1,059

3.3

It wasn't complete chaos-I told myself- even as the patrons and kids who came to gamble and fight with their garage-made robots screamed and ran for their lives.

All in all one could call it… active….

Fredzilla was jumping up and down across the interior of the fishery setting fire to anything that didn't move; spreading general chaos while Tracer came racing in and throwing her newly augmented disks, stunning the Yakuza with what must have been painful jolts of electricity, given how they convulsed as they hit the ground and stayed down while she retrieved her weapon and kept moving, too fast for any real effort to shoot her.

She'd better keep that up. Outside of Baymax, Fred and Hiro, none of the teams body armor could stop a bullet from one of these rifles.

I threw my eyes to the other screen, watching as Honey Lemon primed her explosive gel to the wall, stepped back behind the cover of a few crates and… froze the wall?

I raised an eyebrow, incredulous.

Did she make a mista-

My question was answered as Wasabi shoulder rushed the thing and the frozen sheet metal exploded like glass before the two were diving into the fray.

Sloppy. She should have used an explosion. The sound alone could rupture eardrums and disorient. Not to mention the shrapnel.

Until I realized that she didn't possess ear protection, and neither did most of the team.

Note to self, jot that down.

On the holo map, and the screens I could see Big Red and Hero diving straight in at speeds that could be likened to a moving car

Then they're all inside and now I can call it complete chaos.

Through my insects, rather than the equipment, I can hear orders being barked in the other rooms and I felt the and heard of the movement inside as the rest of the guards scrambled to spring their 'trap'.

I leaned back in my seat, steepling my fingers as I watched.

"Don't get cocky. This can't be all the guards Baymax counted." Was my choice of warning. I felt the guards with the heavy guns readying their weapons. The sound of cocking guns making a familiar sensation settle in the pit of my gut as I tried to tell myself I wasn't fighting back a smile.

As they were about to burst in from their hiding spot on the upper floors, each one stopped where they were, seizing up in pain and beginning to scream as my black widows bit into their necks once, twice, a third time. The pain was undeniable and the five men began scrambling, trying to swipe them off.

Down below, the others were oblivious. Between the screams, the panic, the fire and the other thugs, five hidden guys in a room were just part of the background static.

Baymax rushed forward punching men with his massive fists and and shoving some others into the open water pit in the middle of the fishery. At the other side of the building Plasmatech was cutting his way through wooden bats, chains and other weapons while Chemistress followed up by sticking them with whatever her sticky goo was, holding them in place and moving on.

Fredzilla was having fun, too much fun while he jumped all over the warehouse, bouncing between walls and shelves as he used flames and the new addition of his claws to spread teargas across the place while Tracer was actually covering the three possible exits. Anyone that slipped by the others inside and managed to reach the doors was met with a taser disc to the face.

A nice bit of coordination and planning. I didn't expect them to have thought of it truth be told.

My bugs started to pick up other sounds around me, listening to the people in the nearest apartments beginning to call the police shortly before the onboard police scanner in front with heathcliffe got the dispatch call for the nearest officers to investigate.

Heathcliffe tossed me a look through the rearview mirror.

I nodded, opening up the comm channel. "Dispatch is calling it in guys. Not sure how fast they'll be but let's wrap this up." I said.

"You heard the lady!" Hiro called out. "Chemistress, Plasmate-"

"OI YOU LITTLE BRATS!"

(X)

Inside the warehouse Baymax and Hiro turned at the sound of the voice, finding, to Hiro's immense surprise, a very very familiar Bot fighter stepping in from one of the Harbor side doors with a slew of new guys.

Guys that were armed.

More bats, more chains, with at least two of them sporting shotguns.

Yama laughed at him. Standing tall with his hands on his hips.

'Fire that rocket fist right now and he's not gettin back up any time soon.' Taylor's voice crackled in his ear.

Baymax tilted his head, as though considering it.

"You think you surprised us? This was all an ambush! No cops are comin' ya runt!"

"Shit!" Tracer cursed. "I fucking knew the Triad were gonna work the cops."

"They can't ignore this forever. The building is on fire" Chemistress optimistically pointed out.

Yama laughed, before pointing a fat finger at the two of them. "You think you and this lug can take me? The Yakuza Oyabun Yama!"

He cracked his knuckles "Come on boys! Let's teach these kids not to mess with Yakuza! The Big one's mine!"

And with a singular roar the mob was rushing across the warehouse towards him and Baymax weapons raised

Hiro did not let out a squeak as he ducked behind Baymax.

Two, three, four of the guys tried to tackle the big red behemoth, but looked like four guys trying to climb onto a statue, the rest rushed straight past them towards Plasmatech, Tracer, Chemistress and Fredzilla.

With what would be the equivalent of a shrug and a shake of his massive arms, Baymax threw the men off of him. They hit the ground with thuds and got right back up.

One guy came at Baymax with a crowbar, only for one fist to come up and block the strike, and Hiro could almost see the moment the impact rippled up the guys arm, see that split second of pain on his face as he moved away, clutching what must have been a throbbing wrist.

"On a scale of one to-"

The question was cut off as Baymax was forced to raise a thick fist and clothesline a second attacker with a sidestep.

He hit the ground and this time did not get up.

Baymax leaned over him this time.

"On a scale of one to te-"

His wing extended and with a snap/crack of metal striking face and nose, the third guy who had been wielding a chain landed flat on his back, nose gushing blood.

If he didn't know any better he could swear Baymax didn't like getting interrupted.

"On a scale of-"

The last guy jumped on Baymax's back, a metal pipe or something being used to wrap around what would be his robotic friends neck if he had one… or needed to breathe.

He pulled.

Baymax leaned back.

And back.

And back.

By the time the guy realized what was about to happen, he only had time to squeak out a half strangled "Nononononono" Before Baymax landed flatly ontop of him, their bodies and combined weight cracking the thick wooden floor boards.

"On a scale of one to ten. How would you rate your pain?"

The strangled, high pitched wheeze of agony left Hiro with the firm conviction that this particular case was a solid twelve.

Baymax rolled off of the guy and Hiro managed to look at four the four men in various states of agony.

"Well." He began. "That went well. Lets go hel-"

"RHAAAAAAGH!"

The roar felt like it was just shy of damaging his hearing before Yamma's body crashed into Baymax.

Now, Hiro wasn't an expert (he was), but the amount of force (and weight) required to move Baymax even a little bit was… pretty significant.

Which is why it was surprising Yamma managed to get even half a step before Baymax had to actually take up a bracing stance and grapple his arms with Yamma's to stop.

"I'm gonna crush you like a bug!" The man roared meaty arms and muscles shaking.

Baymax looked him up and down.

"Weightlifting belts are recommended by professional trainers to avoid injury when one is about to engage in strenuous activity…"

…

'Note to self.' Hiro thought. 'Program a chip with some badass lines or something.'

"Baymax!" He cried to him. "That's the bad guy!"

"That does not change the possibility of self inflicted injury Hiro."

Hiro's palm smacked against his forehead.

(X)(X)(X)

I wasn't sure if I wanted to smack my forehead in dismay… or laugh at the absurdity.

Baymax was fighting Yama… that is to say, Baymax was giving away free medical advice while Yamma tried to toss him around.

Tried being the key word of course.

Yama may have been strong, for a baseline human but Baymax weighed almost seven hundred pounds in that armor. He wasn't going anywhere. Much less with Yama's choice of fighting style. If I had to liken it to something, it was wrestling, mixed with boxing, mixed with Sumo. All upper body strength.

And now Baymax was hugging him.

Yama was trying to lift and toss and Baymax was taking it for a hug.

Something that sounded like a mix between a sob and a laugh escaped me.

I decided to focus on the others for the time being. Tracer and Fredzilla had decided to go with hit and run attacks, with Fred jumping between the ceiling and the floor, literally pouncing on thugs as he used the smoke as cover while Tracer was moving between the crates like a mouse in a maze, losing any pursuers in the dizzying twists and turns before rushing in from a different angle, hitting them hard and fast before disappearing all over again.

Plasmatech was rounding up the unconscious people, securing them with wrist bindings to make sure they didn't get away before the cops got here.

And Chemistress was really starting to hit something of a stride.

Tinkers were always dangerous in my world. But Bio Tinkers, were something to be truly feared.

A Tinker with a specialty in Chemistry wasn't exactly something I'd want to face on my best day.

Poison gas, acid, napalm, bombs, flesh eating toxins. The possibilities were endless. I doubted Honey Lemon had it in her right now to make those things; not yet anyway, but the versatility in the tools she could bring herself to make was very much still there and she was bringing it fully to bear right now.

Freeze bombs to make obstacles, sticky resin to hold people in place, smoke bombs for cover, tear gas, slick floors to trip them up. Everything in her arsenal was being used to systematically rip the mob of nearly two dozen men to a collective of confused and dazed whimpering mess of pathetic without even laying a finger on them.

Most people would think Baymax, or Wasabi were the most dangerous of this team.

Most people would be stupid.

I gave another precursory pass of the warehouse with my insects, flies and mosquitoes flying through the air, trying to find anyone else through their senses. It was a good thing fish attracted so many flies. I could put a few more in the air than normal and the team would be none the wiser.

Then, one of my bugs hit something.

Something hovering right in the middle of the warehouse. Above the team

Something that felt like metal and shouldn't be there.

I straightened in my seat, my mind focusing on this new, unknown danger.

Another fly came in. It hit something again, this time, latching on with tiny feet to a surface that shouldn't be there.

I opened the comm.

One hundred and fifty minutes of moderate aerobic activity is recommended for the average adult male per week to enjoy a healthy heart.

I ignored Baymax currently laying ontop of a sprawled, panting Yama.

All my senses honed in on this thing.

"Guys! Something's wrong." I hissed.

"What's up Control?"

I wasn't sure.

I gave it a guess.

"There's some kind of spy drone here!"

"What!?"

"Someone's watching all of you!"

"Where is it" That was Gogo.

The controller seemed to have noticed something was wrong, with a lurch and sudden burst of movement, the thing was flying out the roof access window.

I followed it, watching with my minds eye.

"North! It's going North! Follow it!"

"I don't see anything Control" Wasabi called, peering out the warehouse door.

"Trust me!" I hissed. "It's there, go after it!"

The first one to listen to me was Fred of course, The others moved to wrap up their fights fast, but Fred was out the door and onto the roofs in a moments notice.

Of course, he had to actually know where North was. "Turn left Fred!"

He may not know where North was, but he could follow directions.

I snarled, feeling the insect about to slip out of my range a second before it finally did and I was effectively blind.

"Not seein anything!" Fred bemoaned.

"Head up another three blocks. If you don't see anything there turn back aroun-"

I needn't have even bothered.

Right there, through Fred's camera I saw whoever it was.

I had to bite back a groan.

I could just tell.

Fucking… Tinkers…

The cloaking field came undone, just in time for me to see the drone attach itself to the guys gauntlet.

I wasn't sure how big he was, or how much of that size was armor, but the armor itself was a muted slate grey color, with a leering, grinning skull for a helmet, cords or wires that looked like dreads going from the top of the skull to other parts of the suit, clawed fingertips ended in wicked points with an axe hanging off of his belt, single edged, curved with the other side of it ending in a pointed spike that looked like it could punch through Baymax's armor easily

"Ohhhhh… Guys is this first supervillain? Because this seriously feels like first supervillain!"

"Not the time!" I snapped.

If anyone said that Fred had jumped and squeaked at the sound of my voice some time after this, he would say they were a lying liar who lies.

The… villain, whoever he was, offered Fred a lazy salute before I saw the familiar sight of Jet boots and backpack activating, his feet hovering off the ground a moment before he took to the sky.

"Can Baymax follow!" It was Gogo who asked, apparently having moved close enough spot the streak through the sky.

I shook my head, crossing my arms as I leaned back in my seat. "Too much of a head start. Not to mention that he seems to be a lot lighter"

The team fell into silence.

Then, Hiro spoke up. "Alright guys, we're done here, let's meet back at HQ and talk about this guy."

As good a plan as any.

I shut off the screens turning my eyes at the sound of Heathcliffe flipping the page on his newspaper.

"This evening has proven most enlightening miss." Was his calm little droll as he folded up that newspaper.

I was really *really* starting to hate that rear view mirror.

(X)(X)(X)

Happy New Year everyone :) Enjoy

Stories:

\- Complete: - Reconciliation (Worm AU), A knight in the Dark (Naruto/Souls, Oneshot), Lines (Mass Effect, Oneshot), Like Mother like Skitter, Unfit (Naruto)

\- In progress - Outcry: Worm/Dark Souls (Alt Power), Souls of Heroes (Fate/Souls), Legacy Undone (Naruto), Umbram Mortis (Worm AU), No good deed... (Worm AU), Overwatch shorts, Exodus: (Worm/BH6),

-TV-Tropes pages-

Outcry / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, No Good Deed (Fanfic) - TV Tropes , Reconciliation Worm / Fan Fic - TV Tropes , Like Mother Like Skitter / Fan Fic - TV Tropes, Legacy Undone / Fan Fic - TV Tropes (Please contribute if possible :))

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Ld1449

Jan 1, 2018

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Ld1449

Ld1449

To the last, Kill them all

Feb 28, 2018

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#1,101

3.4

The ride back to Fred's mansion was silent, and the back of the van smelt like sweat and dirt. Hiro and Baymax opted for flying back while Wasabi and Honey Lemon rode with me and Heathcliff. Fred and Gogo were navigating through the rooftops, avoiding police cars driving towards the docks.

Fred's voice was ecstatic through the comms. "Dude! We just fought our first super villain!"

"No we didn't," Wasabi replied, helmet under his arm as he drank some water. "We fought the whole Yakuza contingent south of Seattle and found some super villain watching from a few blocks away. Also this would be our second."

"Do we count Callaghan as our first?" Honey Lemon inquired.

"No no no. That was our origin story villain," Fred explained. "That's a whole different category in and of itself. That's the supervillain we'll look back on in a few years and wonder how he ever gave us trouble by comparison. Unless he comes back bigger and badder in the sequel."

"I don't know; Callaghan had Hiro's microbots and was about to tear a hole into hammer space and went by Yokai. That's pretty supervillainy to me, so… point to Wasabi," Honey Lemon mused.

"Look, you guys need to focus. This whole thing just stinks to high heaven..." Gogo toned, her voice wary. "Yama and the Yakuza were all in a specific part of town, where they were in charge of a Chinese-run fishery. We take them down, and some armored wacko is spying on us from afar. With high-tech drones to boot. How the hell did you even spot them anyway?" The question was for me.

"The smoke from the fire," I lied, grateful that it'd taken them this long to start asking, gave me time to come up with something believable. "I noticed it warping around the drone through one of the cameras." I hoped they didn't press for answers or think to double check the feed. If they did, I could only pray one of them had panned their eyes around that spot at least for a few seconds.

Gogo grunted, I noticed her wall riding across the face of a building to jump onto another. "So… why did the Yakuza clearly have a super bad guy waiting outside of their bot fight extravaganza, but not have them run interference? Or even help?"

A silence fell over the group.

"Oh crap." Wasabi bemoaned.

"He wasn't working for the Yakuza." I could almost feel Hiro slapping his forehead.

"Right. My money is on the Triad. They're the only other group that would have the money to pay some guy to come after us."

"And seeing as how we've been hitting their stash houses all month…" Honey Lemon finally trailed off. "But he didn't come after us. Maybe he showed up late?" Honey Lemon put a finger to her lips in thought.

"He was spying on us." I finally decided to just answer, peeking at Wasabi and Honey out of the corner of my eye. "Getting information for when he eventually does fight you. Hence, the drone and him running away the second he saw Fred."

"Probably because he saw the super cool awesomeness of my suit! His own armor couldn't stand a chance against the might of Fredzilla! I'd cook him to a crisp!"

"Fred," Gogo's voice droned through the commlink. "Shut up."

"Yes ma'am, shutting up."

"We should go over Fred's footage when we get back." Hiro said. "Might be able to find something. Material, model, something."

I nodded. "I agree. Armor looked high-tech. Even with just looking at it maybe you can tell what weaponry he's carrying. That can help later."

"Also!" Fred barked. "This can't go on any longer! We need to give you a hero name, T! After all, you're one of us now!"

"There are other priorities Fred."

"It's tradition!" He insisted.

"You've been doing this for less than two years and have never named anyone or even had someone else join the team. There is no tradition."

Fred was unperturbed. "It's gotta start somewhere!"

I rubbed my forehead.

"We've been using 'Control' and 'Console'. That's good enough given that my job is literally monitoring controls and consoles."

"How about Oracle!?" Honey chimed in.

"Oh oh! I got some names! Like like, Sightseer! Controlgirl! Or Fot-Dub!"

There was a confused silence at that last one. It was Wasabi that voiced everyone's question. "Uhhh...what the heck is Fot-Dub?"

"Fly on the Wall. F. O. T. W. W for Dub."

Too close for comfort really.

"Fred…" My voice sounded deceptively like Gogo's.

"Shutting up…"

(X)(X)(X)

We got back to the mansion twenty minutes later. The van entered the garage and the others filed in as quickly and quietly as they could, with Hiro, Baymax, Gogo and Fred already out of costume as they filed in.

The garage door closed, and Wasabi and Honey got out first, going to the basement in order to shed their armor at their own respective stations.

I eyed Heathcliff as the butler opened his door. He met my gaze through that rear view mirror with a poker face that would make a Vegas card shark green with envy.

Without a word the man stepped out, closed the door, and walked away.

I stepped out of the van myself a second later, looking to the others as Hiro ran a hand through glossy hair that still glistened with sweat.

"You guys need to shower," I drawled.

"We're aware," Gogo grumbled out as she marched past me, her hair and body smelling of soot and burnt wood. "Fred! Where's the nearest of the hundred bathrooms in here?!"

"Up the stairs, left, right, left, first door ya see."

Marching over to her locker, she proceeded to grab her extra clothes and make her way up the stairs with the others soon following her example.

(X)(X)(X)

Akande Dubeni smiled thinly as he adjusted the diamond cufflinks at his wrist. The soft chorus of music lilting through his ears as he struggled to stop himself from humming along. The high skyscrapers of downtown loomed through the window of his suite, their bright lights glimmering like jewels in the night. Finally, the cufflink was in place and he adjusted the sleeve sharply with a tug before reaching for his tie.

"Anansi," he called to seemingly empty air. "Suit status?"

A thin hologram hovered in front of his eyes, offering a readout and diagnostic of his suit, where it was safely hidden away. All systems green. No security systems triggered.

Akande turned, eying his laptop computer, the drone's memory card still downloading the footage into his hard drive.

His "Secondary Business" phone began to vibrate, and Akande turned towards where the thin object was sitting on the night table. "Anansi, private line two please."

He heard the crackle in his ear. "Yes?"

"My people within the police are rounding up the Yakuza," Cheng said from the other line. "Yama was a dog, but we won't have another like him to throw out there. Did you get what you needed?"

"I do not fail..." Was Akande's short answer.

"What exactly was this for? You didn't fight them. All I see is a lost asset." His voice became terse.

Akande felt a flash of annoyance leak into his own voice.

"You, solicited my services. I did not come to you. Either trust my methods or I will return your investment and you may find yourself other help." A bluff.

"You leave and you won't get the second part of our deal!"

"Do I sound like I care?" He asked, finishing with his tie.

"Fine! I get it…."

That's what he thought.

"Good. Your problems will be dealt with in short order. But your questions are…unnecessary, Mr. Cheng."

The computer chimed, the download complete.

Akande leaned closer, eyeing the feed. He could see it all, the heat sources shaped like the thugs under Yama's employ, the ruffians bot fighting, the bots themselves, and then the chaos as the Six crashed the party.

With a gesture, the map expanded, showing the hidden images of Yama and his lieutenants inside the two boats. He began to tap on the images of the Six, highlighting them amongst the rabble as the heat signatures switched to target mode. The Six were a bright yellow, the rest of the rabble were blue. He had another screen pop up and he inputted in some commands.

"That confidence better be warranted. The Koreans hate us more than the Yakuza. No money can be used to point them at the Six."

"It is," he answered. "Here is a bit of information for you. The one called Big Red is likely a machine."

"The papers label Big Red as the leader."

"The papers are wrong." The drone's data was clear. The mass and density of the body and armor… the weight was off. As though the inside was hollow. "Either an impressive combat algorithm or remote controlled by the true leader of the six."

A pause.

"I see… and you-"

"All in due time." With the click of a button, the laptop and its readings were gone. "I am currently occupied. Rest assured I will fulfill my end of our deal. So long as yours is fulfilled."

"The payment was given upfront, Headhunter. The rest comes later." Akande let out a closed-mouth exhaled through his nose, irritation twisting his face before he schooled his features.

"Of course."

With a crackle of static in his earpiece, the call was done. Akande stepped out of the room and into the hallway, only to find Aadhira waiting for him impatiently by the elevator.

"We're almost late!" She admonished. "I thought it was women who made men wait!"

"Only when the men do not look as good as me." He smiled, reaching her and planting a firm kiss to her lips.

"What took you so long in the city?"

"I had heard of San-Fransokyo traffic. I wanted to see it for myself," came his cheeky reply as the elevator dinged on their floor.

"If we miss our appointment to this restaurant because of your curiosity-"

"Then I will buy the restaurant for you," he promised, only half joking.

(X)(X)(X)

Finally, an hour or so later, everyone seemed to have unwound somewhat. After showering and with some food, they slowly 'convened' in the basement again, their suits and armors back in their proper places and Hiro booting up Fred's built-in camera footage.

"OK…" The young Asian said as the screen lit up in pale blue. "Let's see what exactly we're dealing with…"

The recording came up, starting from the moment Fred put on his helmet.

"What time was it more or less?" Hiro asked.

"Eleven twenty five," I stated as the others started to guess.

If he thought my knowledge of the exact time was odd, he didn't mention it. He fast forwarded a little, just as the fires in the warehouse were raging in the video..

"Oh oh, rewind it a little more! Ya gotta see this one guy I pounced on. His face was so-"

"Fred," Gogo and I both said at the same time.

The boy frowned, glaring at the both of us. "Oh this is just not fair…"

Hiro laughed, "We'll watch it a little later bud."

He fast forwarded a little more.

"Stop," I said, watching as Fred jumped out of the warehouse window. "Play it normally."

He did, and I watched as all of them, sans Baymax, seemed to lean forward in their seats in anticipation.

I had to admit, it'd been a while since I'd 'met' a new supervillain that I had to gather information on and perhaps be worried about. The nostalgic feeling was undermined by how disquieting said nostalgia was in the first place.

"There!" Honey was the one to point it out, literally pointing at the screen.

With a few clicks and a drag of the mouse, the image was blown up, the grainy resolution fixing itself pixel by pixel until we had a perfect image. Braids. An axe. Skull-helmet. Armored suit.

"That's the guy that's after us!" Wasabi seemed like he was about to be sick.

"Oh yeah baby." Fred smirked, clasping his hands together.

"Doesn't look like anyone local." Gogo was biting at her fingernail at least. "I've never seen anyone like this before."

"Is that power armor!?" Honey lemon was actually leaning over Hiro's shoulder. "No, really, is that real power armor!?"

"That's military-level hardware," Hiro said, eyes wide.

"It is?"

The whole group turned to me, looking at me as though I'd grown a second head.

"Of course it is!" Wasabi was nearly shouting. "Power armor doesn't exactly come cheap or-"

I tuned him out. I was actually more surprised that they had anything like power armor at all, I wasn't trying to imply that it should be common.

I shrugged. "Sorry," I half lied. "Hiro made all your suits so I wasn't exactly sure how 'different' or 'better' this guy would be."

"My tech is at that level… probably. Like the software and the assembly. It's just the materials they have are better. More stress resistance, higher power output. With upgrades and time I can probably do anything, but I wasn't exactly planning on having Baymax tackle Power armor any time soon. If this is military-grade… he can go toe to toe with Baymax easy."

"Oh oh! What if it's the Euros!" Fred chimed in.

"I… doubt it. The European Union wouldn't be interested in dealing with us. We're just heroes running around in San Fransokyo," Gogo surmised, leaning forward.

"So… the Triad and Yakuza…" Honey raised her eyebrows. "Together?"

"To be fair, we did mess up a lot of their operations. Cost them sooooo much cash," Fred gloated.

I didn't say anything, there was nothing really to say as the team dissolved into a chorus of various voices airing out thoughts and observations from what they could see on the screen.

This guy… with the axe, the armor.

I remembered a man in armor. With a pole axe.

His name… I… I still can't bring out his name.

I looked at this one on the screen again, looking for weaknesses. Exposed skin, places where the armor was thin, where bugs could slip in.

I'd taken on other people in power armor.

It was like opening a can.

I tried not to dwell overmuch on the tingling of anticipation in my spine.


	12. daystar5

Apr 17, 2020

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#4,672

April 30th, 2011

Amy Dallon, I had discovered, was not a morning person. By the time she stumbled out of her borrowed bedroom, gait stiff and eyes still half-shut, Vicky, Colin, and I had already sat down to breakfast. From the way she moved unerringly towards the fresh pot of coffee steaming on the kitchen counter, I half suspected that she'd learned to navigate by smell alone.

Nova padded along dutifully behind her, waiting until Amy had poured herself a drink and taken a seat before digging into her own morning kibble. On Amy's first night at the apartment, Nova had managed to wiggle out of her crate somehow and cuddled up with Amy on the bed, and I didn't have the heart to tell either of them that this wasn't technically allowed. If it helped Amy feel better, I wasn't going to complain.

After a few huge gulps of coffee, Amy finally managed to pry her eyes fully open and take in the scene in front of her. "Good...morning? Vicky, when did you get here?"

"About an hour ago," Vicky said, grinning. "Just flew up to the balcony and let myself in. It wasn't even locked."

"It was, actually," Colin said, in between bites of his breakfast. "When you approached, the scanners concealed in the doorframe recognized your biometrics and allowed you to enter. Windows and front door are wired the same way."

Vicky blinked at him. "Uh, thanks?"

Colin shrugged. "In an emergency, this apartment can function as a secure safehouse. I designed it years ago for the Wards, added you and your sister yesterday."

I decided that was a good time to jump in, before the conversation got further off-topic. "Amy, I put your breakfast in the oven to keep warm. Milk, juice, and preserves are in the fridge, so help yourself to whatever looks tasty."

The rest of us had already finished with our food by the time Amy sat down with hers, but none of us moved to leave the table. I tried not to stare too obviously as I watched her descend on her breakfast like a swarm of locusts. She wasn't a messy eater; I might even have called her meticulous, if she wasn't obviously rushing for all she was worth.

She half-cleared her plate in almost no time at all, before looking up from her meal and blushing faintly. "Shut up, Taylor."

I raised my hands in surrender. "I didn't say anything!"

Amy sighed. "I'm used to eating in a rush, okay? Not a lot of time in the morning. You don't need to make a big deal about it."

"You're the only one making a big deal about it, Amy," I said. "I'm just happy you like the food."

"It's a lot better than Mom's, that's for sure," Vicky said.

"Like you can complain," Amy deadpanned, "since Carol always tried to make your favorites."

"Speaking of Carol Dallon," Colin interjected, "I've received word from Director Piggot. She seems to have come to an agreement with your family, but both of you will need to sign off on it."

I couldn't tell if he was intentionally trying to disarm the tension building between the two sisters, or just didn't see it, but either way, his change of topic worked like a charm.

"Fine," Vicky growled. "What does she want?"

"You," Colin replied, matter-of-factly.

I clenched my fist around my knife so tightly that I felt the metal begin to warp. "What the hell does that mean?"

Amy gave Vicky a nervous glance, while Vicky just sighed.

"Mrs. Dallon wants Victoria to continue living at home," Colin said. "In exchange, Amy will officially move in with her aunt and uncle for the time being. In practice, Mrs. Dallon has made it clear that she doesn't much care where you reside, so long as it isn't with her. As another term of the agreement, Victoria would be prohibited from visiting this apartment, or anywhere else you were to take up residence."

Colin looked like he wanted to grind his teeth at those last words, but his tone remained professional. Victoria, not so much.

"Fuck that! Fuck her, and fuck her stupid deal. I'm not cutting off contact with Ames!"

"You don't have to," I said. "You just have to hang out somewhere other than here. You can spend time together at school, or out on the town, or anywhere else. If you want, I bet I can make sure you both get an open invite to the Wards HQ."

"Already taken care of," Colin said. "You can pick up your keycards when you meet with the Director today. Also, please keep in mind that this arrangement would only last until one of you reaches your age of majority. It might even end earlier, if Mr. Dallon wins custody of either of you in the divorce proceedings."

"Which probably just got a whole lot messier," Amy muttered. "I don't like the idea, but it's a lot better than I expected. We can talk about it on the way over to the PRT building, okay?"

"Okay," Vicky said, reaching across the table to give Amy's hand a squeeze. "Just remember that I've always got your back, no matter what."

Colin stood up from the table. "We'll need to leave in roughly 30 minutes to meet the Director on time, and I'll need most of that time to prepare. Amy, Taylor took the liberty of placing fresh towels and a change of clothes for you in the washroom, in case you want to take a shower. If there's anything else you need, she should be more than capable of assisting."

"Tagging along to the meeting, Taylor?" Vicky asked. "I wouldn't mind the moral support."

I shook my head. "Can't, sorry. My day is booked solid. I've got combat training with two PRT squads at 11:00, therapy at 1:00, some kind of radio interview at 3:00, and then I...er, well, yeah. Busy day."

I cursed myself for the slip, which Vicky of course pounced on instantly with a cat-like grin. "And then? Taylor, just what are you getting up to these days that you want to keep secret from your very best friends?"

"It's not a secret," I said, failing to stop a blush from creeping up my face. "I, well, I kinda have this thing planned where I'm going on what you might call a...date?"

Vicky gasped in mock surprise, while Amy rolled her eyes. "A date!? I can't believe you'd try to hide something like that from me. Who's the lucky girl? Anyone I know?"

"It's probably Lisa," Amy said. "She's cute. Kinda annoying, but cute."

One look at my face seemed to be enough to let them know that Amy had guessed correctly.

"Lisa's cool," Vicky said, "but I thought you had something going on with that Jess girl? Did that not work out?"

"No, we're great," I said, forcing myself with sheer willpower not to stammer or look away. "Jess and I might be going out on a date sometime next weekend, actually. We're all meeting up for lunch on Tuesday to figure it out."

Lisa's advice on discussing non-traditional relationships had been simple: speak with pride and show no fear. 'If you can talk about it like it's the most normal thing in the world,' she'd said, 'you'll make them feel like they're the weird ones for trying to make a big deal out of it.' I didn't have anywhere near her kind of confidence, but having an immediate goal to focus on definitely helped.

"Oh, uh, okay then," Vicky said, evidently confused but unwilling to admit it. "Glad to hear it's all working out. Ames, you should go grab that shower. I'm going to try some of that spooky meditation stuff Taylor's been showing me, just in case it helps stop me from punching Mom out a window."

"It's not 'spooky,' Vicky," I sighed. "You just fell asleep and had a dream about being a teenage vampire hunter. I promise, there aren't any ghosts or demons involved in meditation."

Vicky snickered. "That's not what the televangelists say, Tay."

Amy sighed melodramatically as she walked off to the washroom, and Vicky offered to take care of the dishes while I got into my costume. I had a lot of day ahead of me, and I intended to face it with style.

When I reached the training center under the PRT building, I was pleasantly surprised to find a familiar face leading the exercise. The last time I'd seen PRT Sergeant Mary Camden, she'd been teaching free self-defense courses at a downtown community center. I discovered pretty quickly that, when she was at work, she took on a slightly different attitude.

"Alright, squaddies," Sergeant Camden barked at the assembled PRT troops, "I've got a real treat for you today, by way of a joint training exercise with one of the Wards. I'm sure most of you are familiar with Daystar here, but for those not in the loop, she's the girl who tried to fist-fight Lung about three weeks back. The fact that she'd standing here today shows that she's not to be messed with casually. Daystar wants to practice fighting larger groups, so you get a chance to practice taking on a combat Thinker. Your mission today is to take her down. Hers is to stop you."

On the other side of the training room, the group of twenty-odd PRT troops did their best to size me up, while I returned the favor. They ranged in build from small and lithe to outright massive, with more than a few standing even taller than me. They were all dressed in PRT-black exercise gear, which revealed some pretty nasty-looking scars on more than a few of them. Most importantly, they all carried themselves like people who had both training and experience with fighting. They'd definitely give me more of a challenge than the average gang brawler.

Camden gave me a look that I took as my cue to step forward and speak. "Thank you, sergeant. My goal today is to focus on skill rather than power, so I'll be using as little of my Brute strength enhancement as I can. I'm still a lot more durable than the average person, though, and I heal quickly, so you don't need to worry about pulling your punches. I'm not saying this to brag, though. I'm pretty sure I'm going to find out that I'm way out of my depth here, but better that I find out now than later in the field."

"You heard her," Camden said, with an evil little grin. "If she doesn't punish you for holding back, you can bet your asses that I will. Each round begins and ends with my whistle. Oh, and just in case you're still feeling scared of the big, bad cape, for the first thirty seconds of each round, Daystar isn't permitted to attack you, only defend."

I turned my head sharply to stare at her. "Wait, what?"

She grinned at me and blew the whistle.

Where most gang brawlers would have charged in recklessly, the PRT squaddies kept their distance just out of my striking range as they moved to quickly surround me. There weren't a lot of fighting schools out there that would teach you how to efficiently gang up on a hugely outnumbered enemy, but these were trained to fight superpowers with nothing but their skill, body armor, and the occasional confoam sprayer. If I could hold my own against them, I could handle just about anyone.

The squaddies formed up in two rings around me, one inside in the other. When they finally went on the offensive, two of them from the inner ring lunged at me from the front, while my enhanced hearing warned me of another two coming from behind. I didn't have much room to dodge without leaving myself open to the troopers on either side, but I did my best to duck and weave in place, twisting and turning to keep them in my field of view. The two pairs coordinated well, lashing out with fists and feet without ever getting in each others' way. It only took me a few seconds to know that I couldn't stand up to this pressure for long.

I allowed one of the squaddies to get behind me, and faked a gap in my attention. When she went to take advantage of the opening, I ducked down at the last second, causing her to overextend and strike one of the fighters in front of me. I used the slight delay to slip around the injured trooper, putting him between me and the others. Instead of easing the pressure, though, the two furthest from me just faded back into the inner ring of fighters, while two others stepped out from the ring to attack me from behind.

As soon as I heard sergeant Camden shout "That's Thirty!" I spun around and swept the legs out from under the two troopers behind me, making the most of my faster reflexes and the half-second of surprise they afforded me. I tried to dash through the gap in the inner ring, but more squaddies from the outer ring just pressed in to block me off, and the circle closed in on me once again.

Now that I could fight back, I met every attack against me with a strike to the jaw or solar plexus, a sweeping kick, or an over-the-shoulder throw. It still wasn't enough to buy me room to maneuver. Injured troopers would fade back through the rings, allowing fresh fighters to seamlessly take their place. There was no struggling for position, no hesitating while waiting to see which one of them would attack first. I could have plowed my way through them with sheer Brute strength, of course, but the whole point of this exercise was to improve my technique, not my mighty thews.

It wasn't long before more and more of their attacks started to hit home. My endurance was literally superhuman, but I was constantly in the thick of battle, while they could take a breather whenever they needed to. My attacks sent them reeling in pain, sure, but through sheer force of numbers they managed to wear down my guard. By the time Camden blew her whistle, They'd landed two or three dozen blows on me, enough for the hits to begin to sting.

"First round goes to Daystar," Camden announced. Everyone in the room turned to stare at her.

"What?" She said in response, "you think that just because you got to kick and punch her a bit that you'd win the fight? You were barely even tickling her! Even if Daystar's holding back, she still has that famous Brute toughness. Remember, your objective isn't to beat her up, it's to take her down. Now, form up for round two!"

Camden blew the whistle, and the squaddies once again moved to swiftly surround me. I caught a few of them giving each other knowing looks, but none of them whispered anything for me to listen in on. A few seconds before their half-minute grace period expired, the entire inner ring of troops surged towards me as one. I grinned, thinking that I could use the tight quarters to more easily trip them up and redirect their attacks, but the attacks never came. Instead, the whole mass of people just crashed bodily against me, some tackling me around the legs, others hitting higher. In no time at all, the sheer weight of bodies bore me down to the floor, leaving me trapped helplessly underneath a giant dogpile of heavy troopers.

Camden strolled over, grinning like a shark, and mimed spraying the giant pile with containment foam. "Round two goes to the squaddies. Anyone want to tell Daystar what Rule #1 is around here?"

The pile of soldiers surrounding me all spoke as one, though some of the voices from closest to the ground came out a little breathless. "Never fight capes on their own terms!"

The various troopers started disentangling themselves and standing up, until Camden was able to offer me a hand up. "No hard feelings? I know this wasn't exactly the kind of exercise you were expecting."

I let out a short bark of laughter. "No, that was great. It's not like I learn all that much from winning, right?"

"Right," Camden replied, her smile looking significantly less predatory. "What have you learned so far, then?"

"Well," I said, rolling my shoulders, "for one, just because I can't fight back doesn't mean I have to stand around and let my opponents surround me."

Camden chuckled. "It's a start. Want to see if you and my team can break a few more of each other's bad habits?"

"That's what I'm here for," I said. I walked back to my starting position, grinning all the while. I already had a few ideas for how to show the squaddies that the same trick wouldn't work a second time."

The meeting with my therapist seemed to go by a lot more easily than normal, possibly because I was feeling pretty good about myself at the moment, or possibly because I'd just spent close to two hours working out my frustrations in one giant brawl after another. I told her about my relationships with Lisa and Jess, leaving out the parts related to Lisa's cape identity, and was surprised at how well she reacted. She referred me a few books, and when I said I'd already read them, we ended up discussing them for the rest of the session.

On my way out, I ran into Sophia in the waiting room, wearing a generic cloth mask to hide her face even though the room was a Wards-only space. When our eyes met, I didn't like what I saw.

"Hey, Sophia," I said, grabbing the seat beside her, "you look like hell."

"Fuck you too, Hebert," she grumbled. She sounded angry, but I could tell her heart wasn't in it.

"You'd rather I lie to you?" I said. "C'mon, we both know you're all about the blunt honesty. What's wrong?"

Sophia glared daggers at me for a moment, then visibly relaxed as she let out a faint sigh. "It's no big deal. Haven't been sleeping well, is all. Keep getting these weird fucking nightmares. Gonna ask the shrink to set me up with some sleeping pills."

I winced in sympathy. "That sucks, but I know you'll get through it. You're way too stubborn to let a bunch of bad dreams weigh you down for too long."

"Fucking right," Sophia said, showing a faint smile.

The therapist chose that moment to stick her head out and announce that she was ready for the next patient. I held my hand out to give her a fistbump as we both stood up, and I shot her what I hoped was a reassuring smile. She left for her appointment, and I moved on to mine.

A/N: So, you know how I said this chapter would be short? A lot of things I expected to be paragraphs turned into actual scenes. If I was trying to write Daystar as a novel for publication, I'd probably cut some of it out to keep the book as a whole a bit leaner, but what is fanfic for if not shamelessly indulging in unnecessary detail regarding the characters' daily lives?

The result is that I took what was (probably quite obviously) planned as one chapter, and broke it into two, in order to build up more of a buffer, as well as to keep this one chapter from turning torturously long.

Next time, on Daystar!: Taylor learns what a podcast is, then goes on a lovely casual date where nothing bad happens.

Good luck, be safe, and thanks for reading!

Apr 23, 2020

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#4,839

April 30th, 2011, cont'd

"Welcome back to Hero Complex, Brockton Bay's original cape-news podcast. For those of you just tuning in to the live stream, I'm your host Claire Sentient, and I've been talking with the Bay's own Daystar, newest member of the Wards ENE. Daystar, want to remind our listeners what's next on the agenda?"

When Director Piggot booked me for an episode of Hero Complex, and I said I wasn't familiar, Hannah had told me it was kind of like a radio talk show for the internet. I'd shown up at their office expecting to see a professional recording studio, only to find that the place looked more like a college student's living room. Sure, they'd set up one corner as a makeshift control room, where Claire's partner Anna Molly wore a huge set of headphones and a look of intense concentration, but the whole place was still startlingly informal.

I'd ended up sitting on a couch with Claire (real name Clarice Saunders, not actually a cape), surrounded by noise-dampening curtains, sipping tea from a slightly cracked Alexandria mug and making casual conversation. She looked to be somewhere in her late 20s, wearing comfy-looking jeans and an oversized fuzzy sweater that struck me as more suited to curling up with a good book than conducting live interviews. The only things that hinted at her larger-than-life on-air personality were her vividly pink hair and the three huge mugs she'd drained of coffee during the interview so far.

"You mentioned some kind of Q&A session," I replied, "which is funny, because I thought that was what we've been doing for the last half hour."

"Nah, that was just hanging out," Claire said, putting down another half-empty mug to riffle through a stack of index cards. "Over the last week, we asked our listeners to send in their own questions. After we threw out all the boring ones that you've probably been asked a million times, we were left with just enough interesting questions to carry us through the remainder of the episode."

I shrugged, giving her a grin I hoped didn't look as awkward as it felt. "I can't promise my answers will be as interesting as your questions, but I'll give it a shot."

"That's the spirit," Claire said. "First question: Can you describe all of your teammates on the Wards in just one word each, going in alphabetical order?"

"Hmm," I hummed. "Yes, pretty sure I can."

Claire stared at me expectantly for a several seconds before breaking up into giggles. "Okay, fine, I walked into that one. Seriously, though, you have to actually do the thing if you want any credit."

"Of course," I said, feeling pleased as punch. "Aegis is 'strong,' not just because he's the only other Brute on the team, but because he's always there to hold you up if you need help. Clockblocker's word, on the other hand, is 'caring,' no question."

"Not something like 'funny,' or 'doofus?'" Claire asked. "You're going to need a lot more bad puns if you're trying to steal his role as the team's unofficial comedian."

"Couldn't if I tried," I said. "It turns out that the way to dream up good jokes is to crack jokes all the time, and discard the bad ones. I'll face down Nazis or dragons without blinking, sure, but I don't have that kind of confidence."

"Alright," Claire said, "then why not 'confident?'"

"He's probably going to hate me for saying this," I chuckled, "but he jokes so much that it's easy to miss how closely he pays attention to everyone's wellbeing, and how much he does to try and help."

"Aww, that's sweet," Claire said, her smile turning a bit more genuine, a bit less teasing. "Still four more to go, though."

"Right, okay," I said. "Gallant is, well, 'gallant.' He really picked the best name. Amazingly genuine, really stand-up guy. Kid Win is 'curious,' because he's got all these ideas zooming through his head, but he's always looking for more. He's the only Tinker I know who never seems to suffer from tinkertech tunnel vision."

"I've heard that term before a few times," Claire said, nodding. "You're talking about the tendency for Tinkers to try and solve every problem with more tinkertech, right?"

"When you fail to pound a square peg into a round hole," I said, "you clearly need to go make a better hammer."

Claire chuckled. "That's a good line."

"Thanks," I replied. "I got it from Armsmaster. As for the rest of the team, Shadow Stalker would be...wait, is 'badass' all one word?"

"Close enough," Claire said, snickering slightly. "Any reason why she doesn't get the same kind of insightful, heartfelt choice as the others?"

"Believe me," I said, "she'll appreciate this a lot more. Vista, on the other hand, is 'scary,' or maybe 'impressive' would be better. I can't wait to see what happens when she gets to lead her own team."

"Those answers check out." Claire said, "Next question: What would you say is the toughest part of being a Ward?"

I raised an eyebrow. "That sounds like a pretty standard question to me."

"I wasn't finished," Claire said, wagging a finger at me. "What's the toughest part of being a Ward that isn't balancing cape stuff with schoolwork?"

"Easy there," I grinned. "You're going to give the PR minions who write all our scripts a heart attack, taking away that old favorite. Can my answer be 'all of the villains?'"

"It could," Claire said, "but Clockblocker and Kid Win both said the same thing, so I'd have to dock you points for unoriginality."

"Fair enough," I said. "In that case, the toughest part of being a Ward is probably keeping my identity secret from all my out-of-costume friends. If it was just about me, I'm not sure I'd even bother with a secret identity at all, but the sad truth is that outing myself could endanger my friends, my family, and my teammates in the Wards. I'd prefer to be open with everyone, and I'm willing to take the risks that come with that, but I can't ask others to take the same risks for me."

"Daystar," Claire said, "I'm starting to think you're actually as much of a goody-two-shoes as the PRT's marketing makes you out to be."

I couldn't hold back a laugh at that. "Do you think you could tell that to my boss?"

"If you can get her to come down here for an interview, I'll be sure to sing your praises," Claire said. "Okay, time for another question. Is there any truth to the rumors about you and Shadow Stalker being an item?"

Not for the first time, I was glad that my helmet helped conceal my blush. "Sorry, but I can't comment on the personal lives of the Wards or other heroes."

Claire shrugged. "I figured, but my audience would eat me alive if I didn't at least try."

"Sure, sure," I joked. "These still feel like pretty standard questions to me. When do we get to the hard ones?"

"Oh, you want tough questions?" she said, smirking. "Try this one on for size: In light of their recent actions against the Empire and the ABB, as well as their participation in disaster relief efforts, many have started to theorize that the Undersiders might be preparing for a turn to the side of the angels. If that turns out to be true, how do you think the Protectorate and the PRT should respond?"

I tried not to let my surprise show on my face as I considered the question. I had a hunch that this one wasn't on the list of acceptable interview topics that the PR team had agreed on with Hero Complex beforehand. From everything I'd seen, the PRT's media machine liked to paint heroes as Heroes and villains as Villains, and erase as much as possible of the grey area in-between. They rarely talked about villains becoming heroes, probably because it was one of those areas where justice often had to take a back seat to pragmatism. Why let a bunch of former villains rot in jail doing nothing for years when you could just rebrand them with new cape identities and ship them out to a different city where they wouldn't be recognized? As Piggot never failed to remind me, The PRT needed all the capes it could get.

The PR team had been pretty clear that my only response to a question like that should be 'Sorry, but I don't set policy for the PRT.' Of course, they didn't know that I was also supposed to be helping Coil to reform the Undersiders into a hero team. Resigning myself to a later lecture, I pressed forward.

"I don't set policy for the PRT, and I'm not trained in parahuman law," I said, "so don't read too much into what I say. From a purely personal perspective, though, I'd like to see them get a chance to be heroes. From the few times I've encountered them in person, they never seemed like the kind of people who would want to be villains, you know?"

Claire's eyes widened at my answer, as if she hadn't expected me to say anything. "Is that why you saved them from Lung near the beginning of the month? You thought they might make good heroes?"

I shook my head. "I helped them escape from Lung because it was the right thing to do. It would be nice to think that I inspired them to reconsider their villainous ways or something, but in the end it doesn't really matter to me why they might want to change, just that they're serious about it."

As I spoke, I started to feel my essence kindle to life, filling me with pleasant warmth. I'd said what I believed to be true, PR be damned, and something in my power responded to that.

Claire nodded along eagerly. "What about the people who say that they deserve punishment for their crimes, not a second chance?"

I took a deep breath while I composed my reply. I'd have to be very careful with my answer to avoid pissing off either Piggot or Coil. I could try and placate either of them by insisting that it was essential to my cover, of course, but I thought I could do better than that. It felt there was this answer right at the tip of my tongue, something I wanted, no, needed to say, but I'd have to start speaking it out loud before I could know what it really was.

"I know that this answer won't satisfy everyone," I said, "but I don't think this should really be about what they deserve. I could point out how they've never done anything nearly as bad as the other gangs in Brockton Bay, but that doesn't mean they didn't hurt anyone. I could say that having more allies in the fight against the other gangs is more important than punishing them, but it isn't my place to say that their victims should just put aside their grievances. I could even argue that they deserve leniency because they're just teenagers, and were likely pressured or lured into villainy before they were capable of making truly independent decisions."

I paused to take another calming breath, letting the silence stretch out just long enough to be dramatic. As I did so, I realized that I could feel my essence flowing in an intricate, looping cycle, from behind my solar plexus to the top of my throat. The power seemed to echo with my intent, bringing just the right words to mind from somewhere deep inside me, calming my nerves and giving me the confidence to speak.

"I'm not going to argue any of that, though, because I don't think they've really earned a second chance at all. The thing is, I'm not sure anyone can earn a second chance until you've already given it to them. We can't demand that they act like heroes while we continue to treat them like villains. I don't mean pretending that they've never done anything wrong, or letting down our guard just because they ask us to. I just think that, if they tell us they want to make amends, we should listen."

There was a brief pause as Claire seemed to shake herself back into focus. "Yes? I mean, er, don't you worry that people might call you naive for being so trusting?"

I thought of Emma, and Sophia, two people I never thought I'd be able to forgive, let alone be friends with. I thought about Lisa, and Colin, and the other Wards, people who accepted me even after I'd been willing to toss them aside. I thought about what I'd done for them, and what they'd done for me, and suddenly the answer was utterly clear.

"Heroes are supposed to save people, right? Well, sometimes the only way to save someone is to put your trust in them when you have every reason not to."

Claire blinked at me. "I...I don't think I have anything to add to that. Listeners, we'll be right back after a quick break."

I let the weave of essence fade back into my core, confident that I could call it up again when needed. I knew, somehow, that It would give me confidence, eloquence, and grace, but only when I spoke truly and from the heart.

"That didn't sound a lot like the usual canned PR response," Claire said, after the recording light above the couch winked off. "Are you going to get in trouble with your bosses for that?"

I shrugged. "I don't know, honestly. Still worth it."

The rest of the interview went by without any more shocking questions or unexpected power manifestations. For being such a good sport, I was given a signed Hero Complex T-Shirt that I couldn't actually wear without outing myself, and a $250 donation to a charity of my choice. Since everything actually went according to schedule for once, I had more than enough to get changed at the PRT building, stay far away from Piggot's office, and stop back home to fill a backpack with provisions before heading out to meet Lisa at Captain's Hill.

When I arrived, I couldn't see anyone else around for some distance. I layed out the picnic blanket on the hill's gentle incline, sat down, and began scrolling through my phone messages while I waited for Lisa.

Dennis: 3 3 3

Dennis: (i would also have accepted fool, goofball, or rascal)

Missy: Great job, Taylor! Thanks for reminding everyone that they should hold me in awe :D

Carlos: Told you it'd go great! ;)

Carlos: I'm proud to have you on the team.

Sophia: yr goddamn right :D

Chris: rly rly good interview tay

Chris: how u get so gud at this :p

Chris: can I ask u for

Chris: brb just had a great idea

Dean: You were amazing, Taylor :)

Dean: WOO YAH GO GRL YOU KICK ASSS! ^_^ :p 3

Dean: That was Vicky. She also thinks you were amazing.

I was still giggling over my friends' antics when I saw Lisa pedaling up the path on a deep purple mountain bike. She even wore a matching helmet. I moved to stand up as she drew closer, but she waved for me to stay seated. She hopped off her her bike, doffed her helmet, and half sat, half fell onto the blanket next to me.

"Nice bike," I said. "Do I get to call it the Terrifying TattleMobile?"

She put on a look of mock offense. "Ew, no! Since when have I been at all terrifying, anyways? Tremendous, maybe, or Tantalizing, but not Terrifying."

"How about Trying?" I said, with a smirk, before we both burst into giggles. Lisa leaned in towards me and we kissed. It wasn't filled with the same electric mix of hope and fear as our first time, but it was no less intense.

"Hey," she said, barely above a whisper. "Missed you."

"Missed you too," I smiled back. "I know this is technically our first date, but I already wish we could do this more often."

"Funny you should say that," Lisa said, giving me one of her trademark smug grins. "If everything goes as planned, we could be seeing a lot more of each other before too long."

"Oooh, plans," I said, wiggling my fingers like I was holding a set of puppet strings. "You want to talk about that now, or after food?"

Lisa pressed the back of one hand against her forehead and pretended to faint away, falling back onto the grass with a soft 'thump.' "I must have food, my lady, or I shall simply waste away."

I pulled a thermos out of my backpack and unscrewed the cap, letting the rich smell of dark coffee billow out over the hilltop. Lisa instantly rose back up like a vampire in an old-timey movie, grabbed the thermos, and clutched it to her chest as if it was her darling infant child.

We kept laughing and lightly joking as I unpacked the rest of our dinner: a thermos of tea for myself, a loaf of homemade bread, and a wide assortment of crackers, small cheeses, smoked meats, fruit spreads, and pickled things in jars. We didn't have much of a chance to talk as we ate, aside from the occasional murmur of appreciation or request to pass something out of reach.

Lisa tried feeding me from her hand, in that way that always looks so romantic in movies, but we were both so nervous that I forgot to open my mouth and she accidentally smeared blue cheese and pomegranate jam over half my face. We both had a good laugh over that, at least.

It didn't take long for all the food to disappear, down to the last pickled onion. We finished the meal lying down next to each other on the hillside, staring up at the darkening sky, neither of us saying a word. I couldn't say whether it was me or her who moved first, but at some point we ended up holding hands, fingers intertwined. She held on with surprising force, like she was worried we might get torn apart, but I could feel her slow, calm heartbeat everywhere that our fingers touched.

Lisa was the first to break the silence. "Penny for your thoughts, Taytay?"

I let out a contented sigh. "I'm not really thinking about much, really. Today's been long, but everything went well, and being here with you is just...it's nice."

"Mmhmm," Lisa hummed, closing her eyes. "I was listening to your interview earlier. What you said about, you know, second chances? I really appreciate that."

"It was just the truth," I said, turning to get a better look at her softly smiling face.

"I know," she said, before her smile faltered. "You should know, though, that Coil was responsible for getting that question on the air in the first place."

"I figured as much," I said. "I have some pretty good guesses about why, too. Anything to do with what you said earlier, about seeing more of each other?"

Lisa squeezed my hand a little bit tighter. "It's better if you don't know the details. Your reaction needs to look authentic, and you're kind of a terrible liar."

"Am not," I lied, poorly. "I guess I can live with that. I just hope this brings us closer to finally being able to take the snake down."

"It's hard to tell," Lisa sighed. "That man has turned paranoia into an artform. He never sticks his neck out when he doesn't need to, never meets anyone in person when he can do it through a proxy, and never seems to make any mistakes."

I frowned. "That last one's probably because of his power, right? You said he experiences multiple timelines and then chooses the one he likes more. It's all based on precognition, except he doesn't actually see the future himself until he gets there, yeah?"

"More or less," Lisa said. "And it's two timelines only. I'm almost certain of it."

I saw a satisfied smile briefly flicker onto her face. "Oh? What makes you say that?"

"It's the way he sets up missions," she said, "sometimes with us, but more often with his mercs. He lays out the mission, has everyone meet up at the staging ground, and then says to wait for his signal. Sometimes he says 'go' shortly after, and the mission goes off without a hitch. Other times, though, he'll just wait a few minutes, then call off the mission and order everyone back to base. It's weird, but nobody complains because they still get paid for their time."

I considered that. "You think he's setting up go/no go options in alternate timelines?"

Lisa's smile came back full force. "Exactly. The fact that he always sets it up that way suggests that he can only see two timelines at once. Otherwise, he'd give us specific orders after the divergence point, trying as many different approaches as possible. There have been times when he's changed orders in the field, but I'm pretty sure they're the exception that proves the rule, since they only happen after long delays. Long enough for the mission to fail in the other reality."

"Makes sense to me," I said. "Good sleuthing, Sherlock. Sounds like a pretty significant weakness."

"It would be," Lisa grumbled, "if he wasn't so damn cautious. I've been running around in circles all week trying to mind-game my way out of this, but I'm not making much progress."

She sat up, pulling me up with her since neither of us wanted to let go of the other.

"Here's the problem. If we assume that Coil always operates with maximum paranoia, I'd be willing to bet he usually uses his power to maintain one 'normal' timeline and one 'safe' timeline. Whenever something bad would happen as he goes about his business in the normal path, he'll have chosen to follow the safe one instead, where he stayed out of harm's way."

"Right," I said, "so any time we try to attack him, we'll always find out that our princess decided to stay in the other castle that day."

"More or less," Lisa agreed. "Even worse, it's possible that circumstances might lead us to attack him in one timeline not the other. He'd get to learn all about our treachery, but we wouldn't know anything had changed. The main reason I'm pretty sure this hasn't already happened is that he hasn't tried to kill us yet."

"That we know of," I said, shivering. "Fuck, this guy is creepy."

Lisa grimaced. "You don't even know the half of it. Good news is, I can see three possible win conditions. The first one is to have him use his power when you're in the same room as him, in such a way that you can notice. That happens, you know for certain that both his timelines are within your reach, so you just need to punch his lights out and call it a day. That's the simplest option, but it also relies on a lot of factors beyond our control."

I nodded. "What about option two?"

Lisa sighed. "The slow game. We'd need to put him in check before he realized what we're doing, so that both of his timelines ended up caught in the jaws of our trap no matter what they might be. That relies on me being able to ferret out the location of his various hideouts and bolt-holes, though, so it's slow going."

"I'm sure you can do it, Lisa," I said. "What about number three?"

"Unicorn plan," she chuckled. "Get someone with just the right Thinker power to suss out his location, plan a coordinated attack a couple of days in advance, and then fall on him like the fist of an angry god."

I grinned. "I like the sound of plan three, especially that last bit."

"Yeah," Lisa sighed, "but that's why you never want to rely on unicorn plans. The odds of even finding someone with the exact right power to solve your problem are low enough, never mind actually recruiting them. You can risk all the time you have left hunting your unicorn instead of pursuing the harder, more painful plans that might actually work."

"Well," I said, "it's a shame you don't know anyone whose power lets her train and develop new powers all the time. Sounds like she'd be a pretty useful person to have around."

"Hey," Lisa said, mock-frowning at me, "I'm supposed to be the insufferably smug one in this relationship."

I giggled at her over-the-top affronted look. "Fine, fine. I'm still going to try to see if my power will give me a way to track Coil down, though."

"When?" Lisa asked. "Taylor, I'd love a magic fix for this problem, but you still need to train to fight Hookwolf and Lung, not to mention helping Amy with her family bullshit, running your after-school fight club, and managing whatever's happening between you and Shadow Stalker. On top of that, we don't know enough about how your power works to say whether or not that's even possible. You should leave the investigation work to me. It's what I'm best at, after all."

"You're right, but I don't have to like it," I grumbled. "It feels wrong not to be helping."

Lisa put an arm around my shoulders and snuggled up against me. "Honestly, Taylor, that Claire person was right about you being such a goody two-shoes. It would be frustrating if it wasn't so cute. Besides, you're already helping more than you know. Coil wants you under his control, and he's willing to expend a lot of effort to get you. He knows that you care about me, and that gives me a bit of extra leverage that I didn't have before."

I pulled her tighter against me, feeling a shiver that had nothing to do with the cool evening air. "Won't that make him see you as a threat to his control? What if he decides that you need to suffer some kind of accident?"

Lisa chuckled. "That's the best thing about it. He thinks that I'm just manipulating you for protection against him, probably because I've been deliberately leaking evidence to that effect. If he ever needs to get me out of the picture, his plan is to just show it all to you for an instant angry breakup. He's too much of a huge fucking sociopath to even imagine that I might honestly like you."

"He doesn't deserve to be called a snake," I growled. "Snakes are too good for him. He's a tapeworm, a wriggly little parasite who hides in shit and leeches off others."

I paused, suddenly struck by an unpleasant thought. "Lisa, you know that even if we broke up, even if I was mad as hell with you, I'd still do everything I can to try to help you escape, right?"

"I know," she said, resting her head against my shoulder. "It's still nice to hear it, though. Do you mind if we just put all that Coil stuff aside for a while, lie on the hill and, I don't know, watch the stars come out?"

"Not at all," I said, adjusting the blanket behind us to make sure we weren't lying on bare grass.

We lay on the hillside together in comfortable silence as the last glow of sunset slowly faded from the sky. I tapped a bit into my enhanced hearing power just to listen to the soft, steady whisper of Lisa's breath, imagining our hearts each beating in time with the other. Everything was so still, so peaceful, that I began to imagine time itself had stopped just for us.

After about twenty minutes, Lisa let out a frustrated sigh. "Changed my mind. Stars are boring. Wanna try kissing a bunch instead?"

I felt my face blush so hotly that it should have been able to light up the entire hillside. Lisa, too, was blushing, but it didn't at all detract from the wicked smirk on her lips. I rolled onto my side, took her hands in mind, and proceeded to forget all about the stars.

Spoiler: New Charm: Impassioned Discourse Technique (*)

Outside, the plague continues to rage, but I pay it no heed, for I am charged with the sacred duty of writing about girls being cute together.

I'm not 100% on the logic uses in this chapter, but I didn't want to put you through another 2k words of a character trying to reason out something you all know already, and replacing the topic would require delaying the chapter. Assume that Lisa's power has been applied where necessary to support some of her less-well-founded assumptions.

Next time, on Daystar!: Plans come to a head, steel is drawn, and the tightrope holding up Taylor's double-agent schtick frays by a few threads more as we head into the final chapters of act 3.

Be well, stay safe, and thanks for listening!

Last edited: Apr 24, 2020

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#4,883

May 2nd, 2011

The first few floors of the PRT building seemed to hold an uncountable number of bland, semi-comfortable meeting rooms. The room I sat in now could have easily been the same one that I'd had my first interview in, down to the generic Protectorate posters on the wall and the slightly scratched table in the center of the room. If it looked smaller, friendlier, less polished than before, that was probably just because I wasn't a roiling cauldron of emotion this time. I'd seen too much of the mundane bureaucracy behind the scenes here to ever again feel intimidated by the Protectorate's larger-than-life image, but it probably helped that I wasn't actually the one in the hotseat today.

In the chair next time mine, Amy sat with her gaze fixed on the door, frowning like she was trying to open it via telekinesis. She looked determined, almost frightfully so, but I didn't miss the faint tremors shaking through her shoulders, or the way her fingers twitched like they were playing with an invisible cigarette. Without giving her any warning, I stretched an arm across her shoulders and pulled her against me for a seated half-hug.

Amy leaned against me for a few seconds, letting out a sigh of relief, before she snapped her head around to glare at me and gruffly pushed me away. I smiled and gave her the space, but kept myself within optimal surprise-hug range just in case.

"I'm not nervous," she grumbled, turning her frown on me with full force.

I shrugged in reply. "I know."

"And I don't need you here holding my hand," she continued.

I shrugged again. "Yeah, I know."

"I'm serious," Amy said, somehow finding even more glower-power to send my way. "You're only here because you're better than me at being smug and demanding."

Another shrug, another grin. "I know." That wasn't the only reason I'd asked to come along, but she'd learn the rest soon enough.

Amy let out a long-suffering sigh. "Damnit, Taylor. I only met your girlfriend once but I can already tell that she's a terrible influence on you."

I shrugged once more, but before I could speak Amy leaned over and poked her finger against my nose. "I swear to god if you say 'I know" one more time, I'll make you go bald. Slowly, oh so slowly, so you'll never be able to prove it was me. You'll just have to sit back and helplessly watch your life fall apart one strand at a time."

Before I could reply, the door to the meeting room hissed open, and Armsmaster, Miss Militia, and Deputy Director Rennick filed in. To their credit, they didn't give any sign that the scene they'd walked into was in any way unusual. They took their seats and settled in while Amy and I quickly composed ourselves.

"Miss Dallon," Rennick said, offering her his hand across the table, "it's a pleasure to see you again, especially for reasons that have nothing to do with grievous injuries."

"Likewise," Amy said, with a faint smile. "I was told I'd be meeting with the Director. Is she still on her way?"

Rennick grimaced. "Director Piggot is currently unavailable due to health concerns, so I'll be taking her place today. This is mostly a preliminary meeting, so I'm sure you'll have a chance to speak with her yourself before anything is to be signed."

Amy sighed. "Once I'm officially working for her, do you think she'll finally change her mind about letting me heal her kidneys?"

"Officially, I can't comment," Armsmaster said in his very official deadpan. "Unofficially, I wouldn't hold your breath."

"Speaking of unofficial," I said, "should we dispense with the masks? Everyone here knows everyone else, after all."

Armsmaster and Miss Militia exchanged a brief glance, nodded, and began unmasking. I followed suit, resting my helmet on the table in front of me. I glanced over at Amy and saw her roll her eyes before peeling back the hood on her red-and-white healer's robes.

"Now that everyone's comfortable," Rennick said, "we can get down to the matter at hand. Judging by your comment, Miss Dallon, I take it that you still intend to join the Wards program?"

I caught Amy stealing a worried glance towards me before settling into a neutral expression. "Not exactly, Deputy Director. It would be more accurate to say that I'm open to the idea. Whether or not I'm convinced depends on what kind of agreement we can reach."

"Of course," Rennick said, sliding a sheaf of papers across the table. "Have you had the chance to read up on the terms and conditions in the standard Wards contract?"

Amy set the papers aside without looking at them. "I have. They would be a good start, if I was going to be a standard Ward. Of course, we both know that's not the case."

Rennick nodded, as if he'd seen this coming. "Of course. I imagine you already have some ideas about what kind of contract you're looking for, then?"

Amy gestured towards me, cueing me to speak. "First of all," I said, scanning a finger down the contract in front of me, "we all know that this was written with freshly triggered capes in mind. Panacea has had her powers for several years by this point, and has engaged in extensive training as part of New Wave. It would be the benefit of both parties to get rid of the stipulations for basic training and power testing."

"Panacea has already performed extensive power testing with the PRT," Colin said, with a curt nod towards Amy. "I see no reason to repeat it. Considering her role as a support cape for New Wave, however, I would still insist that she undergo standard combat and procedure training according to the Wards induction curriculum."

"I may not have fought on the front lines," Amy replied, "but I received the same training as the rest of the team. I'll want to learn Protectorate operating procedures, of course, but I'd prefer to continue with my current supplementary combat training under Taylor, rather than go through the Wards training program."

"She's surprisingly good," I added, "even without her power."

'

"You would vouch for her abilities?" Colin asked.

Amy shook her head and started to voice a denial, but I cut her off. "I would. Give me another two weeks and I guarantee she'll be able to pass even the advanced combat exam."

Colin gave me a grin so small it might well have been microscopic, but the warmth in it was genuine. "Very well. If you decide to join, Panacea, I'll let you skip directly to the advanced combat exam. If you fail, however, you'll still need to go through the usual training program. Is that agreeable?"

Amy took a moment to glare daggers at me before turning back to Colin with a nod. "Sure. I can live with that."

"Right," I said, while Rennick made a few notes on his own copy of the contract. "There's a lot here about branding, costume, and other PR stuff. That's all going to need to change. Panacea already possesses full ownership of the kind of branding the PRT only wishes it could make. Amy has no reason to relinquish the rights to her name or heroic likeness, and you have no reason to ask her to change. I see it as strictly win-win."

Rennick nodded. "I'll need to confer with our PR department, but that sounds largely correct."

"Okay," I sighed, "now for the elephant in the room. Money."

"I assumed that would come up at some point," Rennick said. "The standard compensation package that all Wards receive is calculated based in part on restrictions imposed by labor laws and the PRT charter. We can provide additional funding for special accomodations involving disability, housing, dependants, or the like, but the basic wage and educational trust fund are effectively set in stone. Beyond all that, the PRT prefers to grant all Wards an identical wage as a gesture of fair treatment. That said, Panacea is free to negotiate her contract to her liking if she decides to join the Protectorate upon attaining her majority, and time spent with the Wards tends to reflect very favorably in those negotiations."

I blinked at him. "That's, uh, a lot more reasonable than the speech I got from Piggot. Don't tell her I said this, but maybe you should see about managing these meetings yourself more often?"

Hannah held a hand to her mouth to stifle a laugh, while Rennick gave a small grin. "I'll take that as a compliment. Should I take that as a sign that you agree with our policy?"

"I, I uh-understand," Amy stammered, looking like she was caught halfway between panic and shame. Before she could say any more, I put my hand on hers, and gave her what I hoped was a reassuring grin.

C'mon, Amy. You can see my heart beating, hear my nerves crackling, so you know that I'm not worried. You said it yourself: I'm here to be smug and demanding for you. Now's the time for me to do my job.

"I don't intend to contest Amy's salary as a Ward," I said, trying not to grin too widely. "That said, we will need to negotiate payment for her other services before she can sign anything."

"Other services?" Rennick asked, brows furrowed. "I'm not sure I understand."

Behind him, I saw Miss Militia suppress another chuckle, while Armsmaster's grin grew wider by a few microns. They saw where I was going, but Rennick's position as a bureaucrat gave him more than a few blind spots.

"I'm talking about her services as a healer," I said. "Amy routinely spends hours of her own time at the Rig or the PRT building patching up capes after fights. The fact that she's never requested compensation before doesn't mean she's unable to do so now."

Rennick's frown grew deeper. "I suppose I assumed that would fall under her duties as a Ward?"

This time, it was Hannah who spoke up. "Actually, sir, that's not the case. The contract you're holding strictly defines a Ward's duties in terms of training, patrols, emergency response action, and PR events. We have no right, legally or morally, to demand that Panacea uses her powers on our behalf outside of those situations. It would be like demanding that Kid Win spend time maintaining tinkertech for our troopers."

Rennick turned to look behind him at Colin. "Isn't that exactly what you do?"

"It is," Colin nodded, "in exchange for extra funds to supplement my tinkering budget. Technically speaking, I could ask to receive cash as compensation instead, but my contract pays about 50% more this way."

Rennick turned back to Amy and I, and to his credit, his frown had been replaced by his usual neutral expression. "I'll have to confer with the Director, of course, but that seems to be quite acceptable. We can discuss the exact wages at a later meeting."

This was the moment I'd been waiting for. "Actually, sir, Panacea has already established the rate at which she's willing to provide the PRT with her healing services."

Amy turned to stare at me. "I have? Taylor, we didn't."

"Trust me, Amy," I said, low enough that only she could hear. "I had the idea last night, and spent almost an hour this morning crunching the numbers. It's a solid plan."

Amy raised an eyebrow. "I thought you were more about crunching bones than crunching numbers?"

"Hey," I said, grabbing a pen from the center of the table, "I'll have you know that I've got one of the highest math grades in the entire school. I've got some decent brains to back up my brawn."

I flipped over a sheet of paper and wrote a number on the back, folded it up so that Amy couldn't see it, and slid it across the table. Rennick picked it up and almost immediately did a double take worthy of those Looney Toons shorts Dennis loved so much. Colin had to lean over his shoulder to see, and even he seemed taken aback.

"Before you shoot it down," I said, "I'd like to offer you some homework. Take a visit to accounting and ask them how much the PRT ENE pays for emergency medical services compared to other branches of similar sizes and activity levels. On top of that, factor in the amount spent per month on pensions and disability payments for PRT officers injured in the line of duty. You might also look at the relative fatality rate for officers injured on duty, especially in relation to the amount paid annually in death benefits. There's probably a few more factors I haven't thought of, obviously, but I can only go off of publicly available information."

I gave Rennick a few moments to let it all sink in. Judging from his expression, I guessed that he was doing some number crunching of his own.

"When you add all that up," I continued, "I'm sure you'll agree Panacea's offer looks a fair bit more reasonable."

Rennick gave me a slow nod. "I see what you mean. I'll have to run the numbers myself, but based on what you've said, I suspect I'll be able to convince Director Piggot to consider your offer."

Once again, I found myself impressed by how composed Rennick seemed compared to his boss. He was treating the whole matter as a negotiation, not a struggle for control, so he didn't see paying Amy what she was worth as any kind of a loss.

"Of course," I added, "Panacea would continue providing her services to local hospitals free of charge. All that would change is that she would be doing so as one of the Wards."

Rennick gave me a slight grin as he nodded. "Yes, yes, your point is clear. I can't make any further decisions on the topic without consulting Director Piggot, so further negotiations will have to wait for another time. Are there any other points of the contract you wish to discuss?"

"Only a few," I said, turning my attention back to papers in front of me. "Let's start off with the provisions regarding secret identities…"

After another hour of negotiations, Amy and I were able to shake hands with Deputy Director Rennick and call the matter finished for the day. As he and Miss Militia left, Colin stayed behind, approaching Amy and I as we packed up our (admittedly meager) documents.

"Deputy Director Rennick is a good man," he said, "but he concerns himself primarily with the administrative and financial aspects of the PRT, as opposed to those dealing more directly with capes. I don't think he expected you to show up quite so prepared."

"Neither did I, honestly," Amy said. "I thought you were here for moral support, not to act as my lawyer."

I shook my head. "I'm just your friend, Amy, not your lawyer. My version of moral support is just a bit more...thorough."

"That's good to hear," Colin said. "Otherwise, people might be able to raise certain objections regarding conflicts of interest. It's a bit unusual for a Ward to argue on a friends behalf against the interests of her employer."

"Couldn't you say the same?" I asked. "Amy's only been living with us for less than a week, but she still feels like part of the quote unquote family."

Colin smirked. "That might be the case, if I was here to argue on anyone's behalf. Fortunately, my role in these interviews is simply to assess potential recruits and answer questions. I have no stake in the financial side of things, so it doesn't really matter that a steady and highly lucrative job with the PRT would almost certainly assist you in a certain legal case that I might personally be helping you navigate."

Amy frowned. "This still feels like a bit of an ethical grey area. Are you really sure it's worth the trouble?"

Instead of answering Amy's question directly, I leaned over and whispered the actual value of the offer I'd made into her ear. It was a bit of a cheap tactic, but the way it rendered her speechless for the entire walk out of the PRT building was incredibly satisfying.

The rest of the morning and afternoon passed by pleasantly. I had the whole day off school, so I spent most of my time in the Wards's base, catching up with the team. Someone set up a dartboard in the main room with a picture of Lung taped over the front, so Sophia and I took turns aiming for increasingly embarrassing portions of his anatomy before she had to leave on patrol. I made a light dinner for everyone, and only discovered that Chris had been tinkering in his workshop the whole time when he was drawn out by the smell of freshly grilled salmon.

The light and pleasant feeling lasted until about 8:00, when I received a message on my Wards phone that sent me sprinting out the door and into the elevator.

I wasn't actually out of breath when I swooped into Piggot's office, but I felt a sense of urgency just the same. Piggot sat behind her desk as normal despite the late hour, while Miss Militia stood just off to the side. I could feel a palpable tension throughout the room, but couldn't see any hint as to its source.

"Daystar," Piggot said, with a brief nod. "Your response time is commendable."

"The alert was marked as an emergency," I said, "so I ran. Was this some kind of drill?"

Piggot shook her head, then leaned over her desk. "I need to make one thing clear. The urgent matter I'm about to brief you on goes well beyond the normal duties of a Ward. I can't legally order you to assist, so I'm making this a request. If, at any time during this meeting, you feel this task represents an unacceptable risk to your safety or wellbeing, you are free to leave with no consequences. No punitive action will be taken against you, and your refusal will not be recorded on your personal dossier. Do you understand?"

"Yes, ma'am," I said, standing up straighter. "What do you need?"

Piggot gestured towards Miss Militia, who stepped up to speak. "We've just been contacted by the leader of the Undersiders. He's willing to have the entire group turn themselves in, but he insisted on talking with you before he would say any more."

"You're not expected to negotiate with him," Piggot added, "nor are you empowered to make promises on behalf of the PRT. Your only job is to convince him to come to us. Miss Militia and I will handle the rest."

"I can try," I said, trying not to let my whirling thoughts show on my face. Odds were high that this was what Lisa had mentioned during our date on the weekend, the next stage in Coil's plan, and in ours as well. The only problem was that I still had no idea what part I was expected to play.

Piggot reached out and flicked a switch on her desk phone, filling the room with the quiet hiss of ambient noise filtered through a phone line.

I looked over at Miss Militia, who nodded for me to go on. "This is Daystar speaking. I'm told you wanted to talk with me?"

"Glad to hear you, Daystar. I'm Grue, speaking on behalf of the Undersiders. I appreciate that you're willing to speak with me at all, after the first time we met."

When I thought about Grue, AKA Brian Laborn, I thought about how we'd laughed and sang karaoke together with the rest of the gang after my meeting with Coil. I had to remember not to be so familiar with him this time. Piggot knew about my undercover activities, of course, but I couldn't afford to let Brian or his boss know that Piggot was in on the secret. Nothing about being a triple agent was ever simple.

"Nobody got permanently hurt, so I'm willing to hear you out," I said. "Just so you know, the Director has made it clear that I can't make any deals or offer you any promises. I'm just here to answer questions."

"Not a problem," Grue replied, all business. "I'm short on time, so I'll cut to the chase. On Hero Complex, last weekend, did you really mean what you said about second chances?"

That was an easier question than I'd expected. "I did, and I still stand by it. Is that what you want? A second chance?"

Grue sighed, long and deep. "The Undersiders are tired of being villains. We want out, but we'd rather pay our debt to society by working as heroes than by rotting in prison. The last couple of weeks, we've been hitting the Empire and ABB, gathering information to use as a bargaining chip with the PRT."

I glanced around the room to see everyone else's reaction. Miss Militia gave me a faint smile and a reassuring nod, while Piggot directed a suspicious glare at the phone. I had no doubt that it chafed her not to be in full control of the conversation, but I also knew that her nerves of steel would keep her from interfering without good reason. When she had instructions for me, I'd know it.

"I can understand that, Grue," I said, "but I'm not sure what you're looking for me to do."

"There's been a change of plans,"Grue said, sounding like he was fighting to remain calm. "Tonight's job against the ABB went south. We got out, but two of us took serious injuries, and we've got capes on our tail."

I barely managed to throttle down the impulse to drop the charade and ask if Lisa was alright. The only thing that really stopped me was the knowledge that giving the game away now could get her killed just as surely as if Lung himself caught up to her.

"You want us to bail you out," Piggot cut in, her mouth twisting into a small but nasty grin. "You need help, and you're in no position to negotiate."

It might have been my imagination, but I could have sworn I heard Brian's teeth grinding together on the other end of the phone line. "...Yes. That's why I needed to speak to you, Daystar. You're the only person there I trust not to try and screw us over. Promise that you'll do your best to see that we get a fair shake, and I'll give you our location."

Piggot caught my eyes and nodded an affirmative. She wanted me to say whatever I had to in order to get the Undersiders into custody. I knew just as well as she did that a verbal contract like this wasn't worth the paper it was printed on.

"I don't know how much I can do," I said, ignoring Piggot's scowl. "Like I said, I don't actually have any real power here. I'm just a Ward."

"Yeah, I'm not all that happy with it either," Grue said, "but you're the best option I've got. Just promise that you'll try."

I took a deep, steadying breath, looked Piggot in the eye, and nodded. "Okay. I promise I'll do whatever I can to make sure you're treated fairly."

"Thank you," Grue sighed. "We're currently holed up in a safehouse on the corner of Aberdeen and Young. Tattletale and Bitch have both suffered minor gunshot wounds, but are now in a stable condition after receiving first aid. No sign of any trouble in the area right now, but we suspect that the ABB have some method of tracking us. We can hold out for a time against their rank and file, but there's not much we can do if Lung or Bakuda decide to bring the building down on us."

Lisa had been shot. They'd shot Lisa. She'd helped convince me to live for more than just revenge against the ABB, and they'd repaid her with a bullet. In that instant, all of my fear for her safety transformed in raw, caustic rage. I kept silent, but swore to myself that If she didn't pull through, I'd tear the entire gang apart with my own two hands, one limb at a time.

"You may not be aware of this," Piggot said, "but Daystar possesses a powerful Thinker ability similar to a lie-detector. Before I dispatch anyone to rescue you, I need you to promise me that this isn't an ambush, a ploy, or some other form of deception."

"I swear it isn't," Grue said, while I listened intently with the Judge's Ear. "I just want to keep my team safe."

"He means it," I said, earning me a brief nod from Piggot.

"Good. I'm going to transfer you to our emergency dispatch. The operator there will coordinate between you and our rescue team. In the meantime, stay where you are and try to avoid attracting any attention. As long as you do exactly what we say, we'll get you out of this."

She flicked the switch to transfer the call before Grue even had an opportunity to reply. "Miss Militia, you're in charge of the rescue team. You can take one squad and two armored carriers as backup, but I want you to get on the scene yourself ASAP. With any luck, a few capes showing the Protectorate flag will convince the ABB that attacking isn't worth the trouble."

My first instinct was to demand to be put on the team, but I still held on to just enough presence of mind to realize that making demands of Piggot rarely helped. For Lisa's sake, I'd hold back from doing what she would and actually talk with my boss instead of antagonizing her. I laugh with her later over the irony.

"Director Piggot," I said, "I request permission to join the rescue team."

Piggot looked up from her computer screen and frowned at me. "Your job is done here, Daystar. This isn't the time for you to indulge your grudge against the ABB.

I shook my head, holding myself in a stiff, almost military posture. "This isn't about that, ma'am. I just vouched for the Undersiders, and in my mind, that makes them at least partly my responsibility. I feel like I need to keep them safe, and keep them from doing anything stupid, and I can't do either from here. I promise to follow your orders to the letter, even if Lung himself shows up."

"You're sounding distressingly reasonable," Piggot sighed. "I don't trust that. Fortunately, Lung is unlikely to be a problem. Armsmaster, Dauntless, and Battery have been successfully keeping him contained on the opposite side of the docks for the last ten minutes."

I felt a sudden spike of worry for Colin, but this one was easier to swallow down. He could handle himself in a fight just fine, and he'd recently put together a couple new anti-Lung tricks that he was probably itching to try out. He'd be fine.

"All the more reason for me to help, Ma'am," I said. "Less trouble from being short handed."

Piggot and Miss Militia exchanged looks, before Piggot turned back to me and nodded. "You'll be travelling with Miss Militia. You're to follow every order she gives you without hesitation, understood?"

I considered snapping off a salute, but Piggot would probably find it more offensive than respectful. "Understood, ma'am. I won't let you down."

"You've said that before, Daystar," Piggot said. "Just remember that, as far as I'm concerned, you're on the very last of your second chances."

A/N: Update is late because I was suddenly inspired to rewrite the first half of the chapter at the very last minute. It's not my fault; it's the fault of my terrible time management skills.

I'll say more about this chapter tomorrow when I'm not literally falling asleep.

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Threadmarks Dragons 3.16 (Lisa)

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WinterWombat

WinterWombat

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May 29, 2020

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#4,996

Spoiler: I LIVE AGAIN!

Lisa Wilbourne

I never heard the bullet that almost killed me. A thug in red and green levels a pistol at me one second, and the next thing I know, I wake up screaming. All the panic and pain that I should have felt in the moment came crashing down on me at once, every muscle seizing up as my body tried desperately to evade a danger long passed.

Then, just as quickly as it came, the panic is over. My heart still raced, my head still pounded, but I was back in control. The room around me was dark, filled with various metal cages, and for a second I thought I'd been locked in some kind of dungeon before I noticed Grue's shadows roiling over the walls and ceiling. This had to be the pet shop bolthole, then, in that old strip mall. It wasn't the most secure location, barely more than a locked door to hide behind and some emergency medical supplies.

I felt a light weight on my shoulder, and turned to see Alec, mask moved to the side of his head, giving me one of his usual laconic grins. "Welcome back to the land of the living, Tats. You want to scream a little louder? I think there are still a few guys with guns out there who didn't hear you the first time."

"That's enough, Regent," Grue sighed. He was leaning against one of the cages on the opposite side of the room, next to a sleeping or unconscious Rachel. "I've got the room soundproofed, and Tattletale doesn't need you messing with her head right now."

"My head feels pretty messed with already," I said, surprised at how scratchy my voice sounded. "How long was I out? What did I miss?"

"Twenty minutes," Brian said. "After you and Bitch each caught a bullet, we've had just enough time to go to ground here and patch you up. If you've got any insights about what we should do next, I'm all ears."

I took a closer look at Rachel. Sure enough, someone had cut off one leg of her jeans to just above the knee. She looked pale, but not deathly so, and the bandaging around her wound was stained brown with old blood. Her dogs, Brutus and Angelica, had curled up beside her to rest their heads in her lap. Rachel's power could provide both muscle and transport, but using it drained her energy, and she didn't look like she had any to spare.

I slowly raised my hand to my own head, and felt the mass of bandages wrapped around my own skull. When I drew it back and saw my fingertips coated with flecks of dried blood, my whole body began shaking.

"They, they sh-shot me?"

Glancing shot to skull. Suffered concussion, minor damage to-

My head split open. It was on par with the worst Thinker headaches I'd ever experienced, almost enough to make me lose consciousness in the instant before I could clamp down hard on my power. I had to take several deep, shaking breaths before I could speak again.

"Sorry guys," I said, barely able to hear myself over the ringing in my ears. "Looks like a little bit of brain damage doesn't do great things for Thinker powers. I'm guessing the job went bad?"

"It could have been worse," Alec shrugged. "It could've been me getting shot instead of you."

I laughed, even though it hurt, and even though the joke wasn't really funny. Stupid endorphins.

"God, you're r-right. Then we'd all be t-trapped in here with your endless whining. Do we have a plan yet?"

"Bitch took a bullet just above her knee," Brian said. "She can barely stand, and we didn't know when you were going to wake up. The van broke down about a block from here, and we only barely managed to carry the two of you this far. I had to make a judgement call."

"What he means," Alec drawled, "is that he called up your girlfriend and asked the white hats to bail us out."

A bolt of lightning shot down my spine, driving away the fog around my thoughts. "You called T-Taylor? The PRT? They're g-going to want to take us in!"

Brian crossed his arms and glared down at me. "It was the only chance I saw for getting out of this alive, and it wasn't like you were offering me any better ideas. I called them in about ten minutes ago."

I clenched my fists, trying in vain to stop them shaking. "Fuck. Where are they now?"

Brian held up his cellphone, pointing with his other hand to the 'no signal' indicator. "No idea. Had to close the whole room off with my power in case someone started screaming. There's nothing to do now but wait, and get ready to run if we have to."

I flashed him a weak thumbs up. "You've got it, oh fearless leader."

Several more minutes passed in tense silence before I felt a tremendous impact rumble through the walls and floor. Judging from the way Alec and Brian both shot to their feet, they must have felt it too."

"That could be the cavalry," Brian said, fixing his mask back into place.

Alec snorted. "Yeah, or maybe the ABB decided to pull back their search parties and just have Bakuda blow this place apart."

I tried to pull myself to my feet, but a sudden moment of light-headedness made me lose my grip on my power for just a split second.

Impact originates from motor vehicle colliding with the building. Car was not driven into building. Car was thrown at building. Car was thrown by-

I fell back to the floor, clutching at my head as agony ripped through me like a hot wire. A moment later, I felt Brian grab my hand and help me to my feet.

"It's her," I said, smiling despite the pain. "Can't tell if anyone else is with her."

"Right," Brian said. "Regent, help me get Bitch to her feet. Tattletale, can you walk on your own?

"Sure," I said, "as long as you don't ask me to dance. Can you drop the sound screen?"

As soon as Brian's roiling shadows drew back from the walls, I knocked three times on the door, and then spoke through it without raising my voice. "Hey, Daisy. Took you long enough."

Turning around, I saw Alec give me a flat look. "Honestly, Tats, I have no idea what she sees in you."

We could hear a bit of what was happening outside now, and it told a brutal story. I made out the sound of bodies being tossed against walls or ceilings, gunfire in crowded hallways, and people screaming in pain or panic. Every passing second brought the sounds of violence closer to our hiding spot, until, after barely three minutes, everything went silent.

"I think that's the last of the ones in the building," Taylor said, voiced muffled by the heavy fire-safety door. "You guys ready to get the hell out of here?"

As soon as I cracked the door open, brilliant golden light flooded into the dark and dingy safe room. Taylor wasn't just glowing, she was burning. Her emblem shone so brightly over her helmet that it was almost painful to look at, and she was covered head to toe in what I could only describe as an aura. Tiny arcs of golden lightning danced across her limbs, burned in her eyes. My senses practically screamed with unnatural certainty that this was a power I could neither defeat nor escape, and that my only hope was to fall on my knees and pray for a merciful end.

Then she smiled, faint and nervous, and all my fear fell away.

"Daystar," Brian said, giving her a brusque nod. "That's two we owe you." His professional demeanor was somewhat hampered by propping up Rachel's semi-conscious form with one shoulder, but he still more or less pulled it off.

I liked Brian, but the unfortunate truth was that he was better at acting like a leader than at actually leading anyone. Not that I was any better, of course. Case in point, I still couldn't bring myself to think of people by their cape names even though we were all masked up. My head just wasn't in the game, though I'd say I had a better excuse than most.

"You can thank me when we're all safe," Taylor replied. "I cleared out the back alley, and Miss Militia is keeping the remaining goons out front on their toes. Triumph and Shadow Stalker are on their way to back us up, along with an armored transport to get you all back to base. We just need to hold out here for a few more min-"

Like the gunshot, it happens faster than you can think. Pale green light flashes in the darkness behind Taylor, only an eyeblink before a tall, indistinct figure appears behind her, already swinging a glowing sword down at me. I reacted just fast enough to flinch uselessly, too slow, too late.

When there's no cut-to-black moment, no waking up screaming for a second time, I open my eyes to see Taylor's golden-glowing hand holding the blade only inches from my face. She hadn't even turned around, just caught the attack without looking. While I finished letting out a strangled yelp and stumbling backwards, the two of them surged into motion, striking, blocking, and feinting faster than my eyes could follow.

I managed to catch my footing just as the exchange ended with Taylor scoring a solid blow, sending the attacker flying through the air towards a bunch of broken glass and plastic that had once been a giant fish tank. Right before they would have hit, they vanished in another flash of green light. I heard a grunt behind me and turned around just in time to see Taylor gripping both of the attacker's wrists, holding them in place half-way through a strike that would have cut Brian's head from his body.

The figure teleported out of Taylor's grasp to appear at the far side of the room, finally standing still long enough to let me get a better look at them. The first thing I noticed was that they actually had two glowing swords, both with straight double-edged blades about three feet long. One glowed pale green, with hazy edges that my eyes struggled to focus on. The other was covered in jagged lines of red-orange light, like veins of magma pushing out through cracks in the surface.

They were tall, only an inch or two shorter than Taylor, but not as powerfully built, with a costume that absolutely screamed ABB. They were covered head-to-toe in a body glove of matte gray fabric, underneath light red and green robes that wouldn't have looked out of place in a high-budget wuxia film. They wore a stylized half-mask over the top of their face, even though the underlayer already made it into a featureless gray blob. At their waist, I noticed a total of four sheaths, two empty, two holding hilts identical to the ones they were holding. Tinkertech swords?

Not Tinkertech, power uses-

While I reeled from the sudden stabbing head pain, the figure finally spoke.

"I'm not here for you, Daystar," they said, in an electronically distorted voice. "This isn't a matter for the PRT, let alone the Wards. If you leave now, none of us will try to stop you."

"That's not much of a threat," Taylor scoffed. "I've already gone toe to toe with Lung himself to keep the Undersiders alive. I'm not going to turn tail for one of his flunkies."

"True," the ABB Cape said, "but then, you didn't have to worry about protecting a bunch of sitting ducks."

I couldn't tell whether it was them or Taylor who moved first. Alec cried out in pain, and I whirled around to see if he'd been stabbed, only to see that Taylor had violently shoved him out of the way of an attack. She'd caught a sword in each hand, but this time I noticed thin rivulets of blood flowing down her forearms.

"Run!" she yelled, even as the ABB cape vanished again, weapons included. "The way to the back door is clear!"

The next few moments passed in a blur. Brian put a hand on my shoulder and half-guided, half-shoved me forwards, while he and Alec carried Rachel between them. Every few seconds, the ABB cape would appear out of nowhere in another flash of green light and try to murder me, only for Taylor to stop them at the last instant. If it wasn't for the concussion making everything seem surreal and dreamlike, I probably would have been paralyzed with terror.

In the couple of minutes it took me to stumble past the pens filled with ancient sawdust, through the tiny office behind the main shop floor, and finally out through the rear door, I had more brushes with death than in all the rest of my cape career put together. Taylor seemed to be faster and stronger than the mystery cape, but not overwhelmingly so, and teleportation was a tough advantage to beat. By the time we all made it into the alley behind the old pet store, she looked more exhausted than I'd ever seen her.

As soon as we made it out into the open, I started sweeping my gaze around in search of that telltale green flash. When the ABB cape didn't show up for several seconds, I managed to calm myself just enough to work the zipper on my largest belt pouch and pull out my trusty little revolver. I had no idea if I could even shoot straight like this, but the gun had always been more about the threat than anything else.

I saw Taylor's head jerk upwards, and followed her gaze to see the ABB cape leap off the top of the pet store. They'd replaced their green sword with one that seemed to be covered in a fractal spiderweb of silvery light, which shifted unpredictably with every motion. Before I could even start to wonder at the significance of the change, Taylor charged forward, and they clashed.

The ABB cape didn't teleport this time, but something was clearly wrong with the exchange. Taylor's opponent seemed to effortlessly evade her initial flurry of attacks, moving just enough to dodge each punch and kick by a hair's breadth, before stabbing their red sword right through the meat of Taylor's left thigh. She managed to stay upright, but the wound made her hesitate just long enough for the ABB cape to flow around her next attack and draw their sword neatly across the back of her calf on the same leg. Despite the howls of distant sirens and not-so-distant gunfire, I heard the sound of Taylor's flesh tearing open with perfect, horrifying clarity.

Nearby, I was distantly aware of Brian and Alec carrying Rachel to the mouth of the alleyway, getting away from the fight. I knew I should be doing the same, but instead I stood paralyzed and watched Taylor get taken apart. The ABB cape effortlessly dominated the battle the same way that Taylor usually dominated a fight against anyone else. She was still faster, still stronger, but her opponent was taking advantage of every opening, and moving to evade attacks before they even started.

Was the ABB cape a combat Thinker? A precog? Why hadn't they used this ability inside the store?

The whole fight barely lasted a quarter of a minute before Taylor fell to her knees, covered in deep, vicious sword-wounds. The ABB cape looked down at her and shook their head.

"You had the chance to leave, child. If your allies hurry, they can get you to a healer before you bleed out entirely."

They turned their blank gray stare towards me, and I frowned. I was going to die here, but somehow that didn't seem important. There was something wrong with this picture. The ABB cape's silver sword had gone dim, its fractal pattern reduced to a flickering shadow. Before they could charge me, I gritted my teeth together and let my power off its leash.

Swords are batteries for powers. Red is Brute package. Silver is combat Thinker. Powers have limited charge. Silver sword almost depleted.

Screaming through clenched teeth, seeing double from the iron spike pounding it's way through my skull, I brought up my revolver and started pulling the trigger as fast as I could manage. The mystery cape dodged the first shot with a tilt of their head, then parried the next two with their red sword. With the third shot, though, the glow on their other weapon finally vanished entirely. My fourth shot missed, but my fifth and sixth struck their target dead-center.

They stumbled back, but only slightly, and a moment later I heard two flattened slugs fall to the pavement.

Bodyglove is bulletproof, untested tinkertech.

The iron spike drove an inch deeper, and my legs turned to jelly underneath me, dropping me to my knees. The ABB cape walked towards me with a calm, unhurried pace, seeming to neither relish the task ahead nor shy away from it. Just looking up at them made the world start to spin around me, and it took all my concentration just to stay upright. They alleyway melted around me into an impossible collage of day and night, with the stars burning red in fury while shadows stretched out to embrace me.

Why was I still struggling? If I just let myself fall unconscious, I wouldn't have to feel myself die...

"You don't deserve this," they said as they raised their red sword, voice almost too quiet for me to hear. "It's you or me, though, and that's an easy choice to-"

Their speech gave way to a strangled screech of pain, one I barely heard over the sickening crunch of shattering bones and tearing ligaments. I pulled my gaze up to see a gold-plated boot stomping down heavily on the back of their knee, twisting it at an unnatural angle. They pitched forward onto their hands and one good knee, their masked face barely a foot away from my own.

"We're not finished yet," Taylor growled. Her costume was covered in her own blood, but with all the wounds she'd suffered it should have been soaked. She looked like she was barely able to stand, but her aura blazed brighter than ever. From the corner of my eyes, I could just make out a feline shape prowling across the sky above, glowing red and purple like the sky at dawn.

Before the ABB cape could react, Taylor stepped forward and stomped down on their right wrist, eliciting another scream over another crunch of breaking bone. She kicked their red sword out of their nerveless fingers, the glow dimming to bare embers as soon as contact was broken. The cape started trying to squirm away, while reaching with their good hand for one of their two remaining swords. Before they could scramble more than a few inches, Taylor dropped down, pressed one knee into their back to pin them against the ground, then calmly pulled their good arm behind their back and twisted until something broke.

"Swords," I managed to croak out. "Swords hold powers. Green teleports."

Taylor grunted something that might have been an affirmative, then pulled the other two swords out of their sheaths and tossed them away. By that point, I couldn't tell if the ABB cape was struggling to escape or just writhing in pain, but it hardly mattered. The fight was over.

Minutes (or maybe hours) later, Miss Militia and Shadow Stalker ran into the alleyway, Militia's eyes widening in shock at the scene.

"New ABB cape," Taylor rasped. "Sword guy. Still has one working limb, so, y'know, be careful."

Miss Militia turned around and spoke through her radio, hopefully calling for some medics. Shadow Stalker, meanwhile, wasted no time in running up to us.

"Holy shit, Sunshine," she said, "how the hell are you still standing?"

"'m not," Taylor mumbled. "Kneeling."

I chuckled, further proof that I was suffering some kind of brain damage. Shadow Stalker knelt down besides Taylor, pulling out what looked like a standard-issue Wards first aid kit.

"How are you still awake, then? You look like you should be out cold in a pool of your own blood right now."

Taylor swayed unsteadily. "That's cause...ain't got...time...to bleed…"

I couldn't help myself. I burst out into manic laughter. As darkness started to encroach on my vision, I was dimly aware that I should be trying to breathe, but laughing at cheesy action movie lines was just so much more important. The world fell away, and I fell with it.

I reached wakefulness in bits and pieces, grasping at senses one at a time as if worried they might burn me. The air tasted like antiseptic and old blood, and my limbs tingled with a disconcerting coldness that I only dimly recognized as the simple absence of pain. My ears picked up the telltale hum of nearby electronics, and my eyes…

Well, my eyes wanted very much to remain shut. I was tired, and unconsciousness made a pretty poor substitute for proper sleep.

Currently inside PRT infirmary, my power told me, with only a moderate stab of pain. No restraints, but several guards posted outside door. Have been healed by parahuman power. Currently being healed by parahuman power.

I forced my eyes to snap open, and found myself in a private recovery room. I could still feel my mask on my face, and my costume seemed to be intact, but I had no idea how long I'd been out. Glancing just to the left of my bed, I saw Amy, or rather, Panacea, holding on to my outstretched fingers without a look of deep concentration.

When she turned to face me a moment later, concentration gave way to barely suppressed rage.

"Good morning, Tattletale," she said, her voice cold with menace, "or would you prefer to go by Lisa?"

A/N: I'm back!

I have no idea why this one chapter gave me so much trouble, but I hope that by getting through it I've learned a least a little about how to avoid this kind of blockage in the future.

Can't promise I'm going to be able to go back to weekly updates straight away, but I do want to get back in the habit of writing regularly as soon as possible, so we'll see what happens.

Next time, on Daystar!: Taylor and Lisa have some explaining to do! The Undersiders try to settle into their new situation! In everyone's darkest hour, an unsung hero saves the day!

Thanks for reading, friends, and for sticking around through the delay. Take care, stay safe, be well.

Last edited: May 29, 2020

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WinterWombat

May 29, 2020

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WinterWombat

WinterWombat

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Jun 4, 2020

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#5,229

May 3rd, 2011

"Hey, look who's back!"

I frowned. That sounded like my own voice, but it was far too cheery. I'd just fought to prevent a brand new ABB cape from killing my girlfriend and her team, getting slashed and stabbed half to death in the process. I'd won in the end, but only because I was way harder to kill than I had any right to be. In other words, I was feeling a lot of things, but cheery wasn't one of them.

"Maybe give her a moment to get her bearings, Titanslayer? Winding up here again has to be dreadfully confusing."

That was also my voice, but somehow different than the first one. Just like that, my memory clicked into place. I opened my eyes to see the sky aflame with the colors of dawn, the first tendrils of sunlight faintly illuminating the vast landscape spread out before me. I kicked up to my feet, my body impossibly free of pain, and turned away from the mountaintop vista to face my doppelgangers.

As before, I saw three versions of myself, identical except for their expressions and the items they carried. The jovial one on the left held a broken sword, the long-suffering one in the center wore a crown, and the patient one on the right had a bow slung over her shoulder. All three items had been made out of what looked like perfectly polished gold.

"See that, Strategist?" Sword-Taylor said. "Toldja. She's too tough to just lay around."

"Greetings, Taylor Hebert," Bow-Taylor said, as Crown-Taylor put her head in her hands and sighed. "Greetings, Daystar. Welcome back."

I gave them an unsteady grin. "Hey. You're the same Taylors I talked to after mixing it up with Lung, yeah? My, what did you say, past selves?"

"Prior incarnations," Crown-Taylor said. "We were the three who held your power, your Exaltation, before it made its way to you. More precisely, we are echoes of those people, fragments of their minds carried forward within the power itself."

"More than memories, less than ghosts," I quoted, remembering our last meeting. "So, uh, why did you bring me here, then? Did you want to give me any more relationship advice?"

"No," Bow-Taylor said, at the same moment Sword-Taylor shrugged and said "Sure." They turned to each other and exchanged a significant look, before turning back to me.

"We didn't bring you here," Bow-Taylor said. "You carried yourself into the heart of your power, where we reside, likely because you still seek answers from us."

"Not that we're not happy to have you," Sword-Taylor said. "We're not nearly so 'real' when you're not around to perceive us. It's nice having a body again, even if it isn't exactly mine."

"To elaborate," Crown Taylor said, "you made your way here because you lost consciousness while highly in tune with your own essence. The closer your connection to your Exaltation, the easier it will be to speak with us."

"What do you mean by in-tune?" I asked. I had no idea how much of this was just a really weird dream, but listening hadn't hurt me last time.

"It means you were acting in accordance with your nature," Sword-Taylor said, swinging her broken blade at a practice dummy that hadn't been there a moment ago. "As a Solar Exalt, it is your nature to strive, to go beyond, to struggle against impossible odds and exceed your own limits."

Crown-Taylor sat down at a gleaming stone table that had appeared between one eyeblink and the next. "As a Dawn Caste, it is your nature to excel in all the arts of battle, to achieve mastery of war, to conquer and destroy the enemies of Creation." She pointed at the sunburst emblem on her (my) brow, as if it signified something.

"And as Taylor Hebert," Bow-Taylor said, "it is your nature to protect those you love, to stand against injustice, and to inspire others to be better than they are."

Feeling suddenly light-headed, I sat down across from Crown-Taylor, crossing my legs under the low-to-the-ground table the same way she did. "Are you sure? That sounds more like the kind of things people would say about Legend or Alexandria. How can I inspire people if I can barely keep myself in one piece?"

"Your worries are understandable," Bow-Taylor said, sitting down nearby, "but one does not have to be invincible to serve as a symbol of something greater. People will see you getting hurt, but that will also see what, and who, you are willing to be hurt for. You should have a drink; it will be good for your nerves."

She gestured, and I saw the table in front of me suddenly occupied by a large, ornate tea-kettle and a stack of shallow drinking vessels. I poured some for myself, and took a cautious sniff."

"Green tea?" I asked, trying to remember if I'd ever smelled anything like it.

"From the southern coast of the Blessed Isle," Bow-Taylor nodded, clearly savoring the aroma of her own cup."

I frowned. "I'm pretty sure my ideal cup of tea is black with milk and one sugar. If this is all in my mind, why aren't you serving that?"

"It's your mind," Bow-Taylor said, "but it's my memory. Try some. I know you'll love it, because you'll really be remembering how much I loved it."

I took a cautious sip, and felt my eyes go wide at the deep, complex flavors blossoming over my tongue. Rather than admit that it was one of the most delicious things I'd ever tasted, I tried to get the conversation back on track.

"What did you mean by calling me a Solar, or a Dawn Caste? Are those anything like PRT classifications, Brute, Breaker, etc? Solar and Dawn because my powers are sun-themed?"

Crown-Taylor scoffed. "Your powers are 'sun-themed' because they are a gift from the Sun. Not the lifeless ball of burning gas that illuminates your world, but the Unconquered Sun, god above all other gods, embodiment of excellence and virtue, ruler of the heavens and defender of Creation."

I blinked at her across the table. "You're talking about Sol Invictus? Like, the ancient Roman sun-god, big deal religious figure and historical stepping stone on the road to monotheism?"

Sword-Taylor paused her assault on the training dummy to give a deep belly-laugh. "Of course we end up in a world where the patron god of all Solars is only a historical footnote. Can't say if it's an incredible convenience or a cosmic joke, but either way it's fucking hilarious."

I moved to take another sip of tea, only to find my cup empty. With a faint smile, Bow-Taylor began pouring me more. Was that what I looked like when I tried to be smug? How the hell did Lisa even stand me?

"Wait, wait," I said, "this is a lot to take in. You're telling me that my power comes from a god? You know that only crazy people say stuff like that, right? Is that what happened to Myrddin? Am I turning into Myrddin now?"

"You need not believe it," Crown-Taylor said. "I suspect you'll find your own answers soon enough. Just know that, in the world we came from, the Solar Exalted were known as the greatest heroes to ever have lived."

"And sometimes, the greatest villains too," Bow-Taylor added. "Sometimes as the result of wrongful slander, but sadly not always. What's important to know is that the path you now find yourself upon has been walked by hundreds before you, and they have done some work in smoothing the way."

For a second, the mountaintop vista surrounding us faded away, replaced by the inside of a grand chamber so large it looked like it could have held the entire PRT Building. Every surface was made of either polished white marble or shining gold, though thousands of ornate banners and tapestries turned almost every wall into a riot of color. The people filling the room seemed to come in every possible size and shape, but all of them had some sort of symbol glowing over their brow. Several bore the same sunburst as me, but others showed golden rings or half-circles, crescent moons in silver, or astrological symbols glowing with all the colors of the rainbow.

The vision lasted only a few moments before fading back to the now-familiar view of distant lands, but I couldn't shake how real it had felt, nor the sensation of incredible power the image had held. I had no idea who any of those people were, or why they were important, but they all carried themselves like the Triumvirate, with the kind of dignity and assurance that comes from possessing nigh-unstoppable power.

"Normally," Crown-Taylor said, "you would have other exalts to instruct you in the use of your power, and show you the path to further refining your essence. Unfortunately, since you seem to be the only exalt on this entire planet, we echoes shall have to suffice as your tutors."

"Don't worry, kid," Sword-Taylor said, "you've already been doing better than anyone could expect figuring out charms on your own. Anyone can figure out the Fists of Iron Technique with a little trial and error, but mastering Heaven Thunder Hammer or the Fire-Eating Fist so quickly is impressive."

"Okay," I said, "first off all, you don't get to call me 'kid' when we look like we're the exact same age. Second of all, Heaven Thunder what?"

Bow-Taylor nodded and began filling up my teacup for the third time. "She's talking about the techniques you've developed, the ways you've discovered of applying your essence to perform miraculous feats. The Solars of our world had thousands of years to discover, name, and formalize a vast number of these techniques to better pass them on to others. We called them 'charms.'"

"Heaven Thunder Hammer applies great force through a strike, disproportionate from the actual strength of the impact," Crown-Taylor explained. "Fire-Eating Fist allows you to seize power from your opponents' attacks and add it to your own. Your power to repair objects at a touch was known as the Crack-Mending Technique."

I sipped more of the delicious tea. "Hunh. Wait, do all of my techniques have names like this? What about my anti-Master power?"

Sword-Taylor chuckled. "The Defense of the Stubborn Boar. An old favorite, that."

"Okay," I said, "what about that thing where I catch bullets in my hands?"

"The Defense of the Dipping Swallow," Crown-Taylor replied.

I grinned. "Cool. Very cool. What about that technique where I rush someone so fast that it makes a kind of thunderclap behind me?"

Crown-Taylor frowned. "That's, well, that's the Thunderclap Rush Technique."

I raised an eyebrow. "Inventive. What about the simple techniques, like drawing on my essence to run faster?"

Bow-Taylor smirked. "Lightning Speed."

"Seriously?" I shook my head. "Okay, how about using my essence to increase my strength?"

Crown-Taylor sighed. "Strength-Increasing Exercise. These are all translations of the original Old Realm, mind you."

"Right," I said, giving her a playful smirk of my own. "I bet they're much more creative in the original Narnian dialect."

"Oh, the creative ones are much worse," Sword-Taylor said. "Most of them came well after my time, but still. I can't wait for you to hear about Sometimes Horses Fly approach, or the Technique for Evading Doors."

"What's important," Crown-Taylor cut in, "is that we can tell you a great deal about the sort of feats you are capable of, and thus help guide you in the development of your powers. Your connection with your essence should be strong enough now that you can guide yourself here in your sleep. You will still need to train in your own world, but we can at least point the way."

"I'll keep it in mind," I said, "assuming I remember any of this when I wake up, that is. I'm still not even sure any of this is real, but I can't afford to turn down any chance to get stronger."

"Don't worry," Bow-Taylor said. "They say that dreams are easiest to remember when you wake up in the middle of them, and you should be waking up any mo-"

There was almost no transition from sleeping to waking. One moment, I was sitting down at a stone table atop an impossibly tall mountain, the next I was sitting up in a PRT infirmary bed, blinking at the bulky figure of Director Piggot standing by my bedside.

Piggot bared her teeth at me. "Daystar, perfect timing. How are you feeling?"

Wait, was she actually smiling?

"I'm feeling fine, I think," I said, flexing my fingers and toes to check for pain and finding none. "I don't even remember passing out. Did Amy already fix me up?"

"She handled that last night, and sent you to sleep" Piggot nodded. "What's the last thing you can remember?"

I frowned. "Riding back to base in the armored transport with Li-, er, with Tattletale. Ma'am."

"Everything of importance, then," Piggot said. "I can't stay long, but I wanted to tell you that you did an excellent job last night."

I tried not to look surprised, and failed utterly. "Ma'am?"

Piggot laughed. It was quiet, and brief, and more than a little sarcastic in tone, but it was a laugh. "Contrary to what some of your teammates might say, Miss Hebert, I am in fact capable of offering unqualified praise on those rare occasions when it is deserved. Not only did you accomplish your objectives, you managed to hold your own against a powerful and versatile unknown cape and subdue them for capture with an appropriate level of force."

I flinched at that. "Ma'am, I'm pretty sure I crippled their knee, and broke one of their arms in at least two places. Not that I'm complaining, but I'm surprised you consider that appropriate."

Piggot chuckled again. "You left out the broken wrist. As for the rest? They tried to bleed one of my Wards like a pig in a slaughterhouse. As far as I'm concerned, a few broken bones is getting off light. No, you were fighting an unknown cape who'd tried to do at least as much to you, who had expressed intent to use lethal force, and who had already demonstrated significant Brute and Mover abilities. No one who doesn't have their head up their ass will blame you for being certain with your capture. Just don't make a habit of it, understand?"

I nodded. "Understood." The truth was, I was in no hurry to resort to that level of brutality again. Not because it had bothered me, but because it hadn't. The other Taylors in my dream had said that battle was part of my fundamental nature; was that why violence never seemed to truly disturb me anymore?

I swung my legs over the side of the bed, standing up slowly in case of any lingering dizziness. As I'd told Piggot, the last thing I remembered was sitting next to an unconscious Lisa in the PRT transport, desperately hoping that she wasn't too badly hurt. I needed to see her again, but Piggot didn't need to that Lisa and I were more than co-conspirators.

So instead of voicing my real feelings, I took a second to stretch and silently activate the Judge's Ear before addressing Piggot again. "What's the status of the Undersiders?"

I saw Piggot's good mood die a quick, quiet death. "Alive, and held in protective custody. You don't need to worry about them."

"I'd still like to check in on them, Ma'am," I said. "I promised to do my best to look out for them, after all."

"You said what you needed to in order to get them to turn themselves in," Piggot said. "You brought them in safe and sound. {No one's going to hold you responsible for anything else.}"

The Undersiders themselves would certainly object, but she probably didn't want me thinking of them as anyone whose opinions mattered.

I opened my mouth to object anyways, but Piggot held up a hand. "Stop. You're about to say something like 'I would, Ma'am,' and I can't deal with that much naive idealism this early in the morning. You can pay them a visit, but remember that {you have absolutely zero authority over what happens to them from here on out.} I don't want you screwing up our bargaining position by making promises you absolutely cannot keep."

I nodded. "I'll keep that in mind, Ma'am. I just want to make sure they're being taken care of. There's still the matter of our shared snake problem to deal with, after all."

Piggot's frown darkened even further. "You let me worry about that. You have the rest of the day off; I suggest you put it to productive use."

Piggot left the room, and I began changing into civilian clothes. I absolutely intended to follow her advice, but there was no need to tell her that I planned to swing home and grab a few things first. I trusted the PRT to do their job, but in this case, their job was to treat the Undersiders as potential resources instead of people. They deserved to have at least one person in their corner.

Plus, I needed to figure out how Piggot thought I might be able to influence the Undersiders' fate going forward. She was worried that I might do something to mess things up, which suggested that she planned on doing something she knew I wouldn't approve of. If it really was my nature to protect those I love and fight injustice, well, I couldn't just sit by and do nothing.

Technically, the Undersiders were staying in one of the PRT building's residential suites, not locked up in a prison cell, but the armed guards and locks on the doors made the difference purely academic. I showed up wearing civilian clothes and a casual cloth mask, my arms heavily laden with essential supplies. My right arm carried two canvas duffle bags and my largest picnic basket. My left arm carried, well…

"I'm sorry, Miss, but I can't let you bring that puppy inside." The guard, identified by her badge as Corporal Grady, did her best to loom authoritatively, despite having to look several inches up at me. "Hellhound's powers allow her to control and enhance canines. Even a puppy can be deadly in her presence."

Credit where it was due, she was being completely serious. The other guard, Corporal Smith, managed to remain even more stone-faced, somehow. I'd never seen anyone resist the urge to pet the world's most adorable puppy for so long.

"Oh, I know," I said, giving her what I hoped was a totally innocent smile. "Don't worry. She's not a real dog, just a projection made by my power, and part of my interrogation strategy. She looks real, but she's completely under my control."

My plan was stupid, and I'd probably get in a lot of trouble when I was finally caught, but fuck it. Rachel was probably falling to pieces without any dogs to look after, and Nova was a natural at serving as a therapy animal. Plus, even if Rachel did use her power on Nova, it wasn't like the little sweetheart would hurt anyone. I could try to convince everyone why this was the right choice later, but I wanted to help Rachel as soon as possible.

Grady frowned, but I could detect a hint of uncertainty in her features. "Miss Daystar, your profile doesn't mention anything about possessing any dog-related powers…"

"Ah," I said, "but it does mention that I can develop new powers spontaneously. The dog projection is new. I can demonstrate, if you like."

I lowered Nova to the floor, where she looked up at Grady and wagged her tail expectantly. Even Smith seemed interested in seeing what would happen next.

"Total control, you said?" Grady asked.

"Yeah," I said, "I can make her do anything, so long as it's something a normal dog can do. I'm not really sure what the point of this power is, aside from being cute. If it helps me build a better rapport with the Undersiders, though, I won't complain."

"Fine," Grady said. "Have her bark three times, then one time, then two times."

I nodded, while mentally crossing my fingers and praying this would work.

Nova didn't let me down. She gave three quick barks, paused, barked once, paused again, and then barked two more times, before running in a little circle for history''s tiniest victory lap.

Grady looked between Nova and I for several seconds, a thoughtful look on her face, before pulling a small notepad out of one of her uniform pockets, scribbling something on it, and handing it to me.

I took the note, and saw that she'd written 'BARK FOUR TIMES THEN ROLL OVER.'

Shit. Shit shit shit. She'd guessed that Nova might just be a very well trained dog, skilled at responding to verbal cues, so she wanted to see me command my 'projection' silently. I hadn't even thought of that, and I sure as heck couldn't actually do it. Could I still get away with laughing and playing it off as just a big joke, or did I need to make some excuse for why my powers-"

"Wuff! Bork! Arff! Boof."

It took every last shred of willpower I had left not to stare in complete surprise as Nova rolled onto her back, paws raised in a classic 'I want belly rubs!' pose. How did…?

"Well, shit," Grady said, taking the note from my unresisting fingers and passing it over for Smith to read. "Pardon me if this is rude, but your powers are weird, Daystar."

I shrugged. "I didn't choose 'em, I just figure out how to use 'em. Is that good enough for me to go through?"

Grady stared down at Nova for several seconds before shrugging. "Sure, I guess so, but this has to go in the log, and probably the end of day report to the director as well."

"Of course," I said. "It's not like it's a big secret or anything."

Grady stepped away from the door, but before I could go through, Smith held out his hand to block me. "Wait."

I tensed. Of course I hadn't fooled anyone. The whole idea was absurd. They were probably about to put me in handcu-

"Can I pet her?" Smith said, all traces of his former stoicism vanished behind the wide eyes of a true dog-lover. "No, I'm sorry, that's probably weird of me to ask."

I glanced down at Nova for my cue, and saw her roll back to her feet and start to pad over to Smith. "Go ahead," I said, shrugging. It's not like weird even meant anything to me anymore.

Smith leaned down and offered the back of his hand for Nova to sniff. When Nova replied with a happy little tail wag, his face lit up with pure joy, and he started scratching her behind one of her big, floppy ears.

"Wow," he said, sounding half mesmerized. "She feels so...real."

Once Nova had extracted her well-earned tribute of pats and ear scritches, Grady and Smith finally let me into the Undersiders' not-a-cell. I walked into a comfortable looking sitting room, complete with a long couch, a loveseat, and a tiny kitchenette with a sink, microwave, and dining table. In the back of the room, I could see doors leading into two small bedrooms. If it wasn't for the bars on the bulletproof-glass windows, I might have mistaken it for a suite at a cheap hotel.

The whole team seemed to be present. Lisa had laid down on the loveseat, and looked busy pretending to read an old magazine. Alec sat watching TV on one end of the couch, while Rachel had curled in on herself at the other, knees tucked up to her chest. They wore clean-looking civilian clothes, along with cloth half-masks to keep up the pretense of secret identities. I couldn't see Brian, but I could hear the sound of a shower running from near the bedrooms, so that was probably him.

There was a brief moment of confusion as everyone seemed to register my presence. The stillness broke as Nova tore off like a lightning bolt to jump into Rachel's arms, while Lisa all but threw herself into mine, barely giving me enough time to set down the rest of my bags.

I felt tension I hadn't even known I was carrying drain out of my as I wrapped Lisa in my arms and she rested her head against my shoulder. I could still sense a bit of quiet desperation in each of us, the urge to hold onto something we'd almost lost and never it go, but more than anything I felt pure, simple relief.

"You almost died," Lisa murmured, words muffled against the fabric of my jacket.

"So did you," I said, managing a half-hearted chuckle. "Twice."

Lisa's laugh in response was so quiet that I felt more than heard it. "Three times, I'd say. Amy patched me up after the fight, and figured out our secret."

"Oh," I said, thinking about what that must look like to her. "Shit."

Lisa pulled back from me just enough that I could see her smile. "Yeah. I think it took her a full five minutes to decide not to just liquify me on the spot. She's pissed. Mostly at you."

I sighed. "That's fair. Do you think I have to worry about her reporting us?"

"We should be okay," Lisa said. "She's probably going to go vent to her sister, and Vicky trusts you enough to keep her from doing anything rash. You'll need to explain yourself soon, though."

Feeling her start to gently pull away, I released my grip on Lisa, even as one of her hands slipped easily into mine. "How's the rest of the team?" I asked.

Lisa looked back to the couch. Alec flipped a quick thumbs up without looking away from the TV, while Rachel seemed too busy fussing over Nova to acknowledge us. The puppy was practically preening, standing still but wagging her tail exuberantly as Rachel carefully inspected her teeth and paws. I was still terrible at reading Rachel's expressions, but she didn't seem upset.

"Doing well enough," Lisa said, "considering the circumstances. Alec's bored, but not yet bored enough to turn into an even bigger asshole. Rachel misses her dogs. Brian's putting on a tough face, but he's worried about what's going to happen from here."

I nodded. "That's about what I expected, which is why I brought a care package. Picnic basket is filled with sandwiches, pop, and coffee. One of the bags has basic toiletries and a change of clothes for everyone, though I had to eyeball the sizes so I can't promise it'll fit great. Second bag has some books, one of the game consoles from my apartment, a couple DVDs, and Nova's overnight stuff."

That last bit got Rachel's attention. "You want her to stay with us?"

"Sure," I said, remembering Lisa's advice not to smile. "I know you'll take good care of her, and I think she'll enjoy catching up with you. I can check on your own dogs after I'm done here, if you like."

Rachel nodded. "Okay. Your dog's happy and healthy, so you probably don't suck at taking care of them. Just make sure they're getting enough water, and their cages aren't too small."

"I can do that, Rachel," I said, giving her a brief nod in return. "If there's anything else you all need for your stay in the luxurious hotel PRT, just let me know."

"How about any news on what your bosses have planned for us?"

I turned towards the voice and saw Brian walking out of one of the bedrooms, still damp, wearing gym shorts and an undershirt. Part of me quietly noted that, if I was at all into guys, I'd probably be drooling at the sight instead of just wanting to compare workout routines. The rest of me was busy worrying about how to answer him.

"Not much I can say," I shrugged. "Not for lack of trying. Piggot's trying to keep me out of the loop. My best guess is that she'll want to press your team into joining the Wards, probably on probation like Shadow Stalker."

"Probably," Lisa agreed. "I should point out, though, that doing so will almost certainly involve sending us off to different cities, where we'd be stuck under constant surveillance for the next few decades. That is, of course, assuming they don't just throw Rachel and Alec in jail for being more trouble than they're worth, or put me back in contact with the abusive assholes who call themselves my parents. I don't think it's going to get that far, though."

I grimaced. "What makes you say that?"

"When the guards came in with our breakfast this morning," Brian said, "we found a note from the boss hidden under one of the trays. It said to keep our mouths shut and wait for our lawyers."

I turned to Lisa and raised an eyebrow. "You guys have lawyers?"

"We will, I'm sure," Lisa said. "I have some guesses about what the boss is planning, but I want to save my power for any unexpected emergencies. It's still not fully recovered from when I took a bullet to my braincase."

I winced. "Shit. This is gutting nuts. We can't let the ABB keep escalating like this."

Brian shrugged. "Honestly, the one bright side to this whole mess is being able to say that it's not our fight anymore. I never would have sent us on that casino job if I knew Lung could carry a grudge like this."

"For what it's worth," Lisa said, "it's more about Daystar than us. Lung probably feels like he needs to regain some face after she almost handed him his ass on a golden platter. He's not going to go out and try to hunt down and murder a Ward in cold blood, because he's not Hookwolf levels of stupid, but if he can kill the people that she fought him to protect, he sends the message that all her efforts were for nothing."

"Christ," Brian said, his head drooping. "I didn't sign up for this shit. I appreciate you saving our lives twice now, Taylor, but we might not survive the consequences."

"So do your best to stay out of trouble," I said, smirking. "I'm a busy girl, you know. Can't spend all my time pulling your asses out of the fire, not when there are still villains in the city I haven't gotten around to mortally offending yet."

That earned me a half-hearted chuckle. "Right," Brian said. "Well, whenever you have time in your schedule, feel free to stop by. They won't let us keep our phones, so we can't exactly get in contact with you."

I nodded. "Can do. Lisa?"

"Yeah, babe?" Lisa said.

"Keep your schedule clear. The second you all get out of here, we're going out on another date. The PRT are pretty tough, but they're not tough enough to keep me from cuddling my girlfriend forever."

Lisa grinned. "Alright, Taylor. It's a date."

A/N: Ah, getting back to writing feels good.

Now that Taylor's getting some info on Exalted concepts like Charms and Castes, I want to make it clear that I don't intend to use it as an opportunity to start drowning this story in jargon. Being able to name Taylor's charms can help me with clarity in fight scenes, but I still need to communicate what the charm does and how it feels in order to produce a satisying narrative, so don't worrry about memorizing too much. My goal for this story is (and always has been) to incorporate any game-derived elements in a naturalistic way.

Also, to hopefully forestall any majorly acrimonious arguments from popping up, I want to say that I have, in fact, considered how the PRT is going to respond to this escalation from the ABB. How exactly that'll happen is something that should become clear over the next few chapters. There are enough different views on how things ought to work on Earth Bet that I'm pretty confident no one answer could please everyone, so I've written what works best for the story I want to tell. You're absolutely free to criticize me on my decision, because even though I have no intention of changing it here, I'm always looking to learn for the future. I only ask that you try not to get salty with other posters for disagreeing with you.

At the end of the day, all we have are peoples' various interpretations of a fictional setting. If you look back on history, even relatively recent history, you can see just how shit human society actually is at really understanding why societies and the people in them work the way they do. Theorizing on how the Worm setting would work is basically doing the same thing, just without the benefit of being able to objectively observe and measure a real, tangible thing. By all means, engage in this fun and stimulating creative exercise, but consider just how much certainty you're really justified in claiming, and try to moderate your criticisms accordingly.

Next Time, on Daystar!: Taylor and Amy hash it out! Coil shows the next phase of his plan! Uncertainty and looming danger abound in the last chapter of Arc 3!

Stay cool, everybody, remember that black lives matter, and look out for your own safety and that of others around you.

Thanks for reading!

Last edited: Jun 4, 2020

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WinterWombat

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WinterWombat

WinterWombat

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Jun 11, 2020

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#5,341

May 4th, 2011

I had a bad feeling about this.

I'd ended up spending the night at my room in the Wards HQ, just in Piggot or the Undersiders needed me for something. I couldn't say what I was expecting to go wrong, exactly; maybe an attack from Lung, or an escape attempt from the cape I'd captured. I just knew that I felt anxious about something, and wanted to stick close by. I was a bit worried about what Amy was up to, but I didn't see any angry messages when I checked my phone the next morning, so things couldn't have been that bad.

I managed to make it back to the apartment for 8:30, hopefully early enough to avoid the worst-case scenario of barging in on tired, surly morning-Amy.. Standing outside the door, hand poised above the doorknob, I regretted leaving Nova with Rachel. It was for the best, sure, but I could have really used her reassurance and diplomatic skills at this point. As it was, I'd have to go in alone.

I opened the door, slow enough not to make more than the minimum amount of noise, but not so slowly as to seem like I was trying to sneak in. Of course, the very first thing I saw on stepping inside was Amy Dallon, sitting at the kitchen table in front of two steaming mugs, staring at me with an disturbingly intense expression.

"Good morning, Amy," I said, forcing a smile. "Didn't think you'd be up this early."

"I'll bet," Amy said. "I talked to Vicky. Vicky talked to Dean. Dean called when you left the PRT Building."

I winced. "Ah. I, uh, suppose you want to have a talk?"

Amy gave a forced chuckle. "No, what I want is to punch you in your smug fucking face, but you're a Brute and I can't use my power to heal my own broken knuckles, so I guess we'll have to talk instead. Sit down."

I sat down. Amy silently glared at me for a few seconds, before pushing one of the mugs over towards me. When I reached out to take it, though, her hand shot forward again and grabbed me by the wrist. I could have easily escaped, but I figured I might be able to win points with her by playing along. If Amy wanted to use her power like a lie detector on me, it would only help my case.

Then my arms and legs went instantly numb, falling limply to my sides, and I realized I might have fucked up. Amy's hands were trembling, and her breathing quickly became ragged. Something was seriously wrong with her.

"How much did you tell her?" Amy growled, eyes boring into mine with an almost feverish intensity.

I forced myself to sound calm. "Her? You mean Lisa?"

Amy didn't laugh so much as she cackled, a dry, manic sound. "No, the fucking tooth fairy! Don't even try to pretend that you didn't know who she really is. How much did you tell her about me?"

I shook my head, glad that at least my neck muscles hadn't been paralyzed. "Nothing, really, just that I was worried about your home life. I never even brought up the brains thing, or your birth father, or anything. I promise!"

"Don't lie to me, Taylor!" Amy shouted. "Dropping your cortisol levels and suppressing your micro-reactions might fool the average Thinker, but {I can see the shifting action potential in each of your neurons. I might as well be able to read your mind, and I can tell you're still hiding something.}"

The discordance of her deceptions rippled across my senses thanks to my Judge's Ear charm, standing out as a muddled mess of lies, half-truths, and self-deception. She didn't have nearly as much of a clear read on me as she claimed, but she wasn't going to let that stop her.

"I'm not lying, Amy," I said, trying to keep up my calm front even knowing that Amy could see right through it. "I didn't tell her anything. I just think she probably knows anyways. Her power makes it almost impossible for her not to figure out these things."

"Oh, good," Amy deadpanned. "You didn't sell me out, you just let me sit in the same room as a secret villain Thinker capable of dredging up all of my worst secrets. That's so much better. How long have you two been working together? Has she been helping you this whole time?"

Amy had all the power here, and I was cooperating; if this was just fear propelling her, she should have started to calm down by now. Instead, she was getting worse. She had to be psyching herself up for something, preparing to escalate. I had to get away before she did something incredibly stupid, but none of my limbs responded to my thoughts. I bent all my willpower towards trying to move even a single muscle, but I might as well have been a quadruple amputee for how much good it did.

I turned my focus back to the conversation, in hopes that I could defuse the issue. "Working together? Amy, she's my girlfriend. We're not in some kind of big secret conspira-"

I shut up the instant I realized what I was about to say, but I was already too late.

"You know, for someone with her own lie detector power," Amy said, voice going cold, "you don't seem to know a lot about dealing with them. Now, are you going to tell me exactly what the two of you have been planning, or do I need to start encouraging you?"

"Amy, wait, it's not-" my voice cut out as suddenly and completely as my limbs had, leaving me unable to do more than mouth words and hiss.

"Shut UP!" Amy yelled, tears starting to pool at the corners of her eyes. "Just stop with the fucking excuses already! The only reason I'm even talking to you right now is that I want to know just how much damage you've done before I {hand you over to the authorities.} Why did you manipulate Vicky into liking you? What did you hope to gain by breaking me up with my family? Is there some bigger plot I still can't see, or were you just fucking with me for fun?"

A total lie, and serious bad news for me. If Amy didn't trust the PRT to deal with me, was she capable of taking justice into her own hands? Yesterday, hell, ten minutes ago, my answer would have been 'never.' Now? I had to choose my words carefully.

"Amy, you're my friend," I said, as soon as I regained control of my voice. "I've never wanted to hurt you. I don't blame you for reacting like this, but-"

Her eyes narrowed with renewed fury; I'd said the wrong thing, and was at best only seconds away from something horrible. I couldn't run, couldn't use my strength or skill, couldn't even call for help, but I still had one way of fighting back that didn't involve my limbs. I just hated to ever use it.

I drew as deep as I dared from the hot, spiteful power that my dreams had named Sadistic Insight Approach. "But I never expected this. It looks like you take after your dad a lot more than I thought."

Seeing the look of shock and pain on Amy's face nearly broke my heart, but her confusion gave me a few more precious seconds to keep speaking. I continued to draw on my least-favorite charm, trying as hard as possible to steer it towards something more constructive than pure sadism.

"This is what real selfishness looks like, Amy. It's not taking a break from healing when you're almost too tired to stand, it's knowing that I'm telling the truth but wanting to hurt me anyways. You'd do something you know to be wrong rather than learn that the world is a lot more complicated than you want it to be. If that's really the kind of person you are, Carol was right not to trust you!"

I was shouting by the end, overcome by fear and the desperate need to get every word out before Amy tried to silence me. She cringed back, rage momentarily overtaken by fear and self-hated. My power eagerly offered up the last few words I would need to utterly break her, to hurt her so badly that it would be months before she could be a threat to anyone else.

With an effort of will, I shoved those words aside. "Amy, you can still prove her wrong! You still haven't crossed that line! All you have to do is let go. Please, Amy, let go"

Amy pulled away from me so hard that she fell backwards out of her chair. "No, no, please no, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't want to..."

Seconds after she broke skin contact with me, feeling began to flow back into my arms and legs. I stumbled to my feet, barely managing to avoid joining Amy on the floor, and began lurching my way towards my bedroom. By the time I reached it, I'd regained enough control over my fingers to close and lock the door behind me, pull out my phone and hit one of my emergency contacts.

"Colin, I'm in the apartment with Amy. She's having a breakdown. She tried to hurt me, but I think that's over now. She's not injured, but she needs help, and I…"

I swallowed. Part of me wanted to rush out and wrap her in a huge, tell her it'd all be fine, help her through this. She wasn't a monster, she was a friend in pain. It was what a hero would do, after all, but I...

Ever since my first fight with Lung, I'd been trying to be the kind of person who would do the right thing, but this time I just couldn't do it. I felt like all the fear I'd been suppressing at being so helpless had just come rushing back to me all at once. My head was spinning, and it was all I could do not to throw up.

"...I can't. I just can't."

"You did the right thing, Taylor."

I barely looked up to acknowledge Colin as he took a seat on the other side of the couch, focusing instead on keeping my hands from shaking as I took another sip of tea.

"I just barely managed to clean up my own mess," I said. "If I hadn't been so careless with my words, I could have talked her down before everything escalated so far."

"You don't know that," Colin said. "You found Amy Dallon in the middle of a severe mental health crisis. From what I can determine, she stayed awake through all of last night working herself into an irrational state. We can't know if there was anything you could have said to defuse the conflict, or if her escalation to violence was inevitable."

"Even if you're right," I said, "that's still my fault. I should have tried harder to catch her last night. Hell, I should have told her about this when she first met Lisa."

"Taylor," Colin put a reassuring hand on my shoulder, "I understand the sentiment, but that would have been a terrible idea."

I barely managed not to spit out my tea, and then nearly choked on it as a result. By the time I managed to face Colin I had tears stinging at the corners of my eyes and an expression somewhere between stubborn rage and sheer dumbfounded incredulity.

"She was perfectly capable of contacting you at any time if she wanted to talk, so it made sense for you to assume that she wanted space instead. As for keeping secrets, today's incident suggests that Amy likely wouldn't have handled the news well even in better circumstances. With Tattletale's life at stake, you made the right call by keeping the information limited to as few people as possible."

"Well, it hardly matters now," I sighed. "After this, we're probably going to have to bring her in at least a little bit on project, uh…"

"Project Snakefucker?" Colin asked, grinning faintly. "Tattletale will have to try a great deal harder than mere sophomoric language if she wants to make me uncomfortable. That said, how much we tell Panacea will depend very much on how well she recovers from this incident."

"I can't see much of an alternative," I said. "She knows too much to believe the public cover story about how I just have a soft spot for criminals trying to turn over a new leaf. Coil and the rest of the Undersiders all think that I'm going to leave the Wards to start a new hero team with them, but Amy would never forgive me for working with villains. All that's really left is the truth."

Colin stood up. "You don't have to decide now, and you don't have to decide alone. In the meantime, you should get ready for a long day. The Director's meeting with the Undersiders this afternoon, and she wants you there with her."

"Right. I can do that," I said. "Having a goal to focus on might help me get out of my own head a bit."

"Good," Colin said. "After that, I'm going to call a meeting with all of the wards, and once that's done I'll need you to bring Nova up to power testing."

I nodded. "That sounds like a goo- wait, what?"

Colin gave me a Look. "Taylor, I read the report from the guards on the Undersiders' cell. Either you have dog powers or your dog has human powers. Either is worth studying."

"Maybe she's just really, really smart?" I said, in a tone that didn't even convince me. "I haven't used my powers on her, I promise."

"Well then," Colin said, "I hope you're as excited as I am at discovering the world's first paradog."

I huffed. "I suppose I might have used my powers on her accidentally, somehow. I just, I don't want her getting poked and prodded by doctors all the time, or classified as dangerous tinkertech or something. Powers have nothing to do with why she's important to me."

"I understand," Colin said. "I won't let anything like that happen to her.

"Oh god, I really screwed the pooch on this one. I fucked up."

Lisa was threatening to carve a trench through the floor with her pacing back and forth, so I reached out, grabbed her hand, and gently tugged her onto the couch next to me.

"Lisa, no," I said. "It's not your fault, okay? You were unconscious and in need of medical attention; by the time you woke up, the damage was already done."

Lisa frowned, but cuddled up to me and rested her head against my shoulder. "That's not it, Taylor. I should have been able to see how unstable she really was. If I hadn't been so set on conserving my power, I could have seen it coming and warned you, but instead I just let you walk right into…"

I let myself lean against her a little more and wrapped my arm around her shoulders. With Alec sitting on the floor right in front of the TV, Brian busy shadow boxing in a corner of the room, and Rachel curled up on the floor with Nova, we had the couch to ourselves. I'd been shuffled in here as soon as I'd entered the building, and told to wait. Nobody said I could wait and cuddle with my girlfriend at the same time, though.

"Lisa, please, stop," I said, putting a finger over her lips for emphasis. "First of all, you were conserving your power because you'd been shot in the head. That's a damn good reason. Second, I've already made most of these arguments against myself, and hearing them all over again from you is making me feel embarrassed."

Lisa looked thoughtful for a moment, before giving me a wicked grin and opening her mouth just enough to lick my finger. I startled at the sudden sensation and gave a mighty squeak of surprise. Brian and Rachel both shot us looks, but nobody actually said anything.

"Serves you right," Lisa said, barely suppressing giggles. "I'm supposed to be the logical, insightful one in the relationship, but you're stealing my schtick."

I laughed. "Really? Well, you can be the pretty one instead."

"Taylor, please," Lisa said, tossing her hair back like a woman in a shampoo commercial. "We're both the pretty one."

I felt my face flush, but before I had to stammer out a reply, fate saved me with three sharp knocks on the door. With barely a second's delay, Director Piggot and Armsmaster walked in, the latter closing the door behind him.

Piggot addressed the room. "Before I begin, I want to be clear about just one..."

She paused, then turned to look at Lisa and I, snug as two bugs on an otherwise empty couch.

"Hello, uh, ma'am," I said, failing to sound in any way innocent. "Lisa and I are kinda seeing each other, uh, romantically. Just so you know."

Piggot continued to stare at me for several long seconds before finally shrugging. "Taylor, it gives me great pleasure to be able to say that this isn't my problem, and I honestly don't give a damn. So long as you keep it to your civilian IDs I don't need to involve myself in your teenage bullshit. If you make it my problem, however, I will not be nearly so forgiving."

Hunh. Better than I'd expected.

"Now, moving on," Piggot said, "I want to be clear about something. This meeting is not, in fact, happening. When we are done here, it will never have happened. It will be in all your best interests going forward if you make sure to keep in mind the distinction between things that have and have not happened. Understood?"

While Piggot spoke, Brian had walked over to the couch, turning off the TV on his way by. Once she finished, Brian and Lisa nodded agreement, Alec shrugged, and Rachel glared up from her spot on the floor. None of us wore masks; as far the other Undersiders knew, I'd told Piggot that I'd met them all in my personal life, and only recently discovered that they were villains. Everyone already knew everyone else by now, so there wasn't much point in the pretense of secret identities.

Piggot nodded. "Good. Daystar here has told me of your intentions to turn over a new leaf and join the side of the angels. In light of your recent actions, and considering the relatively minor scope of your previous crimes, that may just be possible. Regent and Hellhound both have matters on their record that complicate the process, but not impossibly so."

"My name is Bitch," Rachel growled, glaring up in defiance.

"Not when I'm in the room, it isn't," Piggot snapped back. After a brief battle of wills, Rachel was the first one to look away.

"Now," Piggot continued, "under normal circumstances, the process would be straightforward. Each of you would be sent to a different PRT branch elsewhere in the country to undergo training and rebranding, while the Undersiders would cease to exist."

Brian and Alec both tensed up as she explained. Brian was tied to Brockton Bay because of his sister, but I had no idea what Alec was worried about.

"Under normal circumstances," Lisa said, nodding in understanding. "People only say that when circumstances are extremely not normal."

"Quite," Piggot replied. "Tomorrow, you will all receive notice that an anonymous benefactor has engaged the services of a highly expensive law firm on your behalf. Your case will never go before a court, but once all the haggling is finished, you will find yourselves granted instituted as a probationary, semi-independent hero team under PRT supervision."

I sat in awe of Piggot's sheer guts at making such a huge bluff. Without actually saying as much, she was implying that Coil's plans for the Undersiders were progressing only because she allowed it. It wasn't wrong, technically, but she made it sound as if the whole thing was part of some grand plan, when in reality we were all basically stuck in a canoe at the edge of a waterfall, paddling desperately just to stay in place.

"Alongside an as-of-yet undetermined Protectorate hero," Piggot continued, "Daystar will serve as your direct PRT liaison and supervisor. The media will play it off as some kind of PR stunt, but make no mistake, her authority will be completely real."

"Taylor's going to be our boss?" Alec said, laying back lazily. "That's cool, I guess."

Lisa rolled her eyes at him. "Last I checked, your boss can't usually send you to prison for pissing her off. Can you at least pretend to take this seriously?"

Alec laughed. "Fine, Tats, you win. I'll pretend."

Piggot shot them both a withering glare. "Keep in mind that this arrangement will proceed only so long as you remain useful. I'll save the rest of the details for the lawyers to deliver, so you can at least try to look surprised when the time comes. If you have any further questions, you can direct them to Daystar. Otherwise, if you can manage to stay out of trouble and play along, we can all get what we want out of this arrangement."

Piggot and Armsmaster left the room without another word, leaving us all in awkward silence.

Rachel was the first to break the tension. "Taylor. You're the leader, now?"

I glanced over at Brian just in time to see him suppress a look of frustration. "More or less?"

"Good," Rachel nodded. "I want my dogs back. Can you do that?"

I sighed. "Good question, Rachel. I'll see what I can do."

This was exactly what I needed in my life right now: more secrets and more responsibility.

One very exhausting afternoon and relatively calm evening later, I was just about to turn in for the night when I got a call on my personal phone.

I picked up, but found myself unable to say anything. I sat on the edge of my bed, heart racing, hearing nothing but faint breathing on the other end of the call.

I couldn't say if it was Amy or I who made a sound first, but an instant later the words all just came tumbling out of our mouths. "Amy, are you alright? God, I'm so-"

"I'm so sorry, Taylor! I didn't mean to-"

"-didn't mean those things I said, I was just trying to shock-"

"-never meant it to go that far-"

"-should have told you-"

"-should have let you explain-"

"-I understand if you can never forgive me."

"if you never forgive me."

The torrent of words dried up just as suddenly as it started.

"I think," Amy finally said, "that this is where one of us would normally laugh to break the tension."

"Can't laugh," I said, though I could feel a faint smile tugging at the corner of my lips. "I'll just start crying."

"Yeah..."

"Amy," I said, "listen, if there's anything."

I could almost hear Amy rolling her eyes. "Taylor, I'm okay. Well, I'm not, but I will be. Doctors basically said that it was basically a nervous breakdown, even though that's not really a thing, medically speaking. They're going to keep me in the psych ward for at least another 24 hours of observation. Vicky and Mark have already been by to get me everything I need."

"That's good," I said, unsure of how to feel.

"I'm going to be seeing a new therapist," she continued. "We only met once, but she's already helped me a lot. Not much experience with capes, but she's plenty familiar with traumatized teenagers, and really, what's the difference?"

I gave a short laugh at that, and sure enough, felt tears start to tickle at the corners of my eyes.

"I think you might want to see her too, Taylor," Amy said. "I'm not saying there's something wrong with you, but-"

"No," I said, "no, I get what you're saying. I think you're probably right."

I let myself fall back on the bed, closing my eyes as I went over my memories of the last couple of days. Fighting for my life, and Lisa's. Nearly getting killed by a cape I'd never prepared for. Dreams of strange people from some sword-and-sorcery setting claiming to be my past lives, and talking about destiny. Coil's plans, and Piggot's plans for Coil's plans, and my place stuck in middle of it. Oh, and I might have accidentally given superpowers to my puppy.

I sighed. "Yeah, you should definitely give me her number. If I'm not crazy right now, it's only a matter of time."

A/N: Tired Winter is tired. Have you all been having a week? I've been having a week.

Kept going back and forth over whether or not to stick with this version of the confrontation with Amy. There's an earlier draft where she handled things a lot better, but I ended up deciding that this way moves the story forward a lot better.

Just to be clear, though, you shouldn't expect any talk of Amy facing charges or the like. This was a brief lapse of reason, not aa villain turn or an unforgivable crime. Taylor's still probably going to be shaky around her for a little while, but it's something they can get through.

Next week's chapter is going to be a series of interludes, followed by chapter 4.1 the week after. I look forwards to seeing you all then ^_^.

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Threadmarks Interlude: The Titanslayer

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Jun 19, 2020

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The Titanslayer

Taylor seemed like the kind of girl who would get bored in a classroom, so when it came time for me to start showing her the ropes, I took her to the same place where I learned everything worth knowing. As she arrived in the dreamscape, it was a simple matter for me to brush away the vista from atop sacred Mount Meru and replace it with the carnage and chaos that had defined so much of my life.

I hadn't lived long enough to see the creation of hell, but the scene that greeted her must have come close. The mountaintop vanished, replaced by a vast expanse of black volcanic rock, some of it still hissing and steaming from the heat of its birth. Wherever the rock cracked, boiling seawater frothed and bubbled with sulfurous gasses. Bodies both human and demonic littered the craggy surface, while those still living did their best to spill more blood or vitriol into the seething waters. Everywhere I turned my gaze, I saw anima banners of radiant gold and silver, or flares of unleashed elemental essence. Above us, two suns, one gold and one green, battled for dominion over the sky, erupting with bursts of cosmic radiation or twisted spacetime wherever they clashed.

Gods, how I missed this.

"What the hell is this?" Taylor cried out, jumping deftly between bodies as she made her way to my side. "Did I sleepwalk into Mordor or something?"

"The Titanomachy," I said, drinking in the long-remembered sensations. "The battle for all Creation, the rebellion of the gods. The war against the Primordials. This is where we were born, Taylor."

One of the greater demons hurled a bolt of sorcerous fire in our direction. Taylor flinched away but I simply allowed it to pass through me.

"Where you were born, you mean. right?" Taylor asked. "I've never seen this place before. I'd remember."

"I mean all of the Exalted, Taylor," I said, gesturing towards the boiling seas. "No human mind can truly understand the Primordials, but it is enough to know that they were beings of unfathomable power who created our very world. They were also monsters who saw no value in things outside of themselves, and who might well destroy all of existence on a whim. To preserve Creation, the gods of earth and heaven rose up against them in rebellion, and created the Exalted to be their chosen champions."

Taylor's eyes widened as I spoke, and the awe she felt for the tale seeped out into the dreamscape around us, sharpening details and granting greater animation to the illusion. Clouds of steam parted to reveal countless other volcanic islands, newly risen from the ocean floor to flood the surface with molten rock. Each one played host to another battle, whether against demons fleeing the boiling water or monstrous ship-breaking leviathans dragged to shore to be butchered.

Taylor gestured towards a hulking Blood Ape with weapons hewn from mammoth bone. "So, you're saying that these gods gave you your powers so you could fight...these things? I can see why you'd need them."

"Hardly," I laughed. "That's merely a lesser demon, a fragment of a fragment of a true Primordial. More than a match for a half-dozen mortal soldiers, but a mere trifle to one of the chosen."

I led her to the water's edge and willed away the bloody seafoam and clouds of steam. Underwater, far deeper than mortal senses could ordinarily reach, we could see a massive cloud of some sickly green substance, lit from underneath by the cherry glow of yet more undersea volcanoes. Vaguely octopoid in shape, it lashed out with miles-long tendrils that ate away at whatever they touched, or spat out misshapen sea monsters from deep within its core.

"That is what we fought here, Taylor," I said, feeling her awe give way to primal terror. "No mere beast, but an ocean of pure malevolence, a different plane of existence dipping only a finger into our world. For thousands of year before the war, everyone knew that such beings could not be opposed, no more than one could stop the turning of the seasons or the course of the sun across the sky."

"Endbringers," Taylor whispered. She greatly underestimated the sheer power of an unbound Primordial, but I didn't bother to correct her. As a symbol of unassailable power and unstoppable destruction, the Endbringers worked well enough. Of course, even if I did say something, I wasn't sure Taylor would really hear it. She'd fixed her gaze upon the writhing form of our primal enemy, and the longer she stared, the more her fear faded away.

"You beat them," she said, and I grinned at the steel in her voice. She was learning the lesson well.

"Yes. Some, we killed. Others, we sealed within a prison made of their own souls, bound by a multitude of oaths and geasa. When this one proved too strong to fight within its oceanic domain, we called upon the ocean gods to raise a cage of volcanic islands around it, so that we could drag its lesser souls up onto the shores to be butchered. As Solars, it is our nature to defeat the invincible, accomplish the impossible, and to always exceed any limits that others would place upon us."

Even if I didn't feel Taylor's emotions leaking into my own, I could never have mistaken the look on her face. Hope, and hunger.

"I didn't bring you here to boast," I said, placing a hand on her shoulder. "I brought you here to show you just what you truly are. The anticipation you feel, the lust for blood, is your inheritance as a Solar of the Dawn Caste. We test ourselves against the strongest foes the world has to offer, that we might grow ever stronger ourselves. Whether you seek to protect the weak, destroy evil, or merely prove your own superiority, whether you hate your foes or love them, this thirst for battle will forever be a part of you."

Taylor hesitantly turned away from the underwater battle to face me. "I think I know what you mean. I've felt it before, against Lung or Hookwolf. I'm just worried, that, well, aren't heroes supposed to strive for peace? A lust for violence is kinda a really big villain thing..."

I tried to give Taylor her best reassuring smile. "Your people have a very narrow idea of what it means to be a hero. I brought you to this memory to show you what you're capable of, but also to show you what kind of war created the need for heroes like us. That's what I meant when I said that we were born here; we were chosen to be the kind of hero who could thrive in a hell like this. You and I were never meant for peaceful times; we are at our best when the odds are at their worst. The power we wield was never meant to be used just against petty criminals; it craves a worthier target. You can deny your bloodlust and allow your power to stagnate, or you can recognize that your world has its own monsters to slay, and embrace your nature as the one meant to slay them."

Taylor frowned. "It can't be that easy, can it? How do I know all this power won't corrupt me in the end?"

I shrugged "I'm not the one to ask. I was lucky; I lived just long enough to see the end of the war, then died before I had to learn how to rule what I had helped conquer. I expect you to go further, and part of that is making peace with yourself, good parts and bad. You'd better get on it fast, too. If you don't manage to kill at least one of the Endbringers within the next ten years, I'll be very disappointed."

Taylor laughed, and while her worry didn't disappear, it faded into the background, along with the visions of the first war. "Sure. No pressure, right?"

The is the first of three short interludes from the perspective of Taylor's past-life echoes. They're all basically lectures shedding some light on certain relevant parts of the Exalted universe, so I'm going to try spacing them out around the other more narrative interludes so as not to inflict one giant infodump.

One thing to note about this chapter is that Sword-Taylor/Titanslayer doesn't necessarily remember everything about the war with perfect clarity, so you shouldn't look on this as a reference to any specific battle or event in Exalted lore. My goal was to give an impression of the scale and violence of the Primordial War, not to indulge in setting Trivia, so you don't need to wonder about how (for example) Blood Apes, as demons of Malfean Lineage (Progeny of Sondok, Warden Soul of Ligier) shouldn't be able to exist before the Empyrean Chaos is crippled and forced to become the Yozi Malfeas. No need to worry about that stuff. I also don't plan on going into crazy stuff like the Three Spheres Cataclysm (if it even happened in this continuity) because, as cool as it can be, it doesn't have enough impact on this story to be worth explaining.

Stay cool, everyone. I'll see you on the weekend with another short update.

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Threadmarks Interlude: Sophia

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Monday at 12:34 AM

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#5,484

November 3rd, 2009

"I'm done playing games, Sophia. I want answers."

Even though Hebert was one of the few girls in our year taller than me, everything about her just screamed 'small.' A mouse could look down on her.

"Yeah, well, we all want things," I said, shrugging. "Like, I want to never have to see your ugly frog face ever again, 'cause it always puts me off my lunch, but you just keep showing up here every day."

Normally, I wouldn't even bother talking to Hebert without Emma around, since she was the one who liked to hit the little cockroach right in her feelings. Today, though, Hebert had been the one to seek me out, catching me in a hallway between classes, and I figured that earned her a few seconds of my time.

"I'm serious, Sophia," Taylor whined. "I know that Emma didn't just decide to hate me for no reason. Something must have happened, and if she won't tell me, maybe you can."

"Yeah, sure something happened," I said, leaning back against a nearby locker. "Y'see, a little squirrel dropped an acorn on her head, and this is crazy, but it somehow just knocked all the stupid right out of her head, so she could finally figure out that she'd been wasting her time on a useless little worm like you."

This was usually the part where Hebert gave up and fucked off somewhere to cry, but today she just balled up her fists and glared back at me.

"F-fuck off, Sophia. I don't care how much you insult me, or shove me around in the hallways, or any of that. Hate me if you want, hurt me as much as you want, but Emma is my b-best friend, and you can't make me give up on her."

I raised an eyebrow. "Hunh. Didn't think you had that much of a spine, Hebert. I'll you what you want to know."

Relief washed over her face. "R-really? I mean, of course."

It was all I could do not to roll my eyes. "Yeah, whatever. Can't promise you'll like it. You're gonna have to come over here, though, because I'm not blabbing Emma's secrets to the whole fucking school."

Taylor nodded, and followed me over to an empty corner by one of the school's broken vending machines. "So, what happened? Was it something you-"

As soon as she stepped close enough, I sucker-punched Hebert right in her froggy little gut, making her fold up like a jackknife. She fell to her knees, gasping for air, face etched with shock like she somehow didn't expect this to happen. I bent down until we were almost at eye level with each other.

"Don't you ever demand anything from me again," I hissed. "How fucking dare you talk to me like that. I don't owe you shit, you understand?"

She turned her eyes downwards as she started to really cry in earnest, so I grabbed her chin and jerked her head up until she was forced to look at me.

"Do you fucking understand!? I want to hear you tell me you understand."

I knew that most of the hallway could hear us by this point, but it wasn't like they had the guts to do anything about it. Hebert tried to say something, but it just came out as more wheezing. What a fucking weakling, totally useless after one punch.

I considered whether to give her a kick to the ribs for good measure or just walk away, only to see her eyes turn from me to stare at something over my shoulder. I turned around just enough to see that it was one of the teachers; I was in his math class, but it wasn't like I bothered to remember his name. He'd clearly seen what was happening, but hadn't yet made a move. Just another fucking maggot with a bad tie and a teaching certificate. I met his eyes, and he looked away almost instantly.

I gave Hebert a few extra kicks before moving on, just so she could see the teacher watch and do nothing. Maybe this time the lesson would fucking sink in.

"...and he just fucking watched me do it!"

Madison broke into giggles, but Emma just nodded and gave me a knowing look.

"That sounds like Mr. Bridges," she said. "Dad helped him with his divorce last year, and he was just so pathetic. Dad joked that half his billables on the case came from convincing Bridges not to roll over and give his ex everything she wanted."

I rolled my eyes. "You couldn't pay me to put up with that idiot. It's like a mouse just going up to a cat and begging to be eaten."

The bell sounded, signaling the end of lunch. Madison got up to leave, but Emma gestured for me to stay behind.

"I've got to admit," she said, voice hushed, "I'm kinda surprised Taylor managed to say that to your face. Think she's finally starting to toughen up?"

"Ugh. I doubt it," I said. "From the sounds of it, she just thought she'd already seen the worst we could do to her. I bet she'll crack once we show her just how wrong she was. The sooner she gives up and stops showing up at Winslow, the better it'll be for all of us."

Emma looked thoughtful. "Yeah. You know, there's one thing we haven't tried yet that really hurt her. To prove that she's really that weak, I mean."

I nodded for her to continue, resisting the urge to sigh. She wasn't nearly as good at hiding her feelings as she thought. If she wanted to keep hoping that a worm like Hebert actually had a spine buried deep, deep down, I'd indulge as long as I had to for her to wise up. It was the least I could as her only real friend.

"Well, I've been saving this for the right time," she said, smiling like a cat about to pounce, "but Taylor has a secret she hasn't told anyone but me and her family. She's gay."

It was a good thing I had my hands under the table, because it meant she couldn't see my fists suddenly clench. "So?"

Emma's sharp little grin faltered just a bit. "So, if she thinks she's got it bad now, how much worse is it going to be when everyone-"

"No," I said, trying not to sound as angry as I felt. "Not interested. We can think of something better."

The last remnants of Emma's grin slipped away, replaced by hurt and confusion. "But, why? I thought you said we were going to do whatever it takes?"

I faked a slight smile. "Oh, don't worry, I'm not saying no for Hebert's sake. Gay bashing, though? That's Empire shit. You're way better than that Nazi trash, Ems. You don't need to do them any favors."

Emma looked relieved, if still a little shaky. "You're right, Sophia. I'm sure I'll be able to think of something better."

"Course you will, Ems," I said, reaching out to give her hand a squeeze. "I get it. You just want to play with your prey a little before you go in for the kill, like a tigress or something. I'm just happy you're having fun."

I was late getting back to class, but it was just Math, so it wasn't like I had to worry about detention or anything. As long as I kept getting As on the tests, what did it matter if I even showed up? I spent most of the period planning out my patrol route for after sunset. Now that I didn't have to worry anymore about how to ask Emma if she was into girls, I had a lot more time for shit that actually mattered, not to mention more aggression to work out.

I end up deciding to hit the Empire's territory. It was the more dangerous choice, but I really, really wanted to shoot some fucking Nazis. Shooting Nazis didn't literally make everything better, but it was good enough for now.

A/N: Bit of a flashback interlude for folks, answering a couple of questions that have come up in the past. Next Echo update is written and should go up on Tuesday.

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Threadmarks Interlude: The Strategos

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The Strategos

"If you are going to master your powers, Taylor, you must first come to understand them."

Taylor nodded from her position kneeling in front of me. I'd conjured up a memory of the academy where I'd once served as grandmaster. The austere practice hall felt almost comically huge with only a single student to occupy it, but if the sight could inspire greater humility in her, all the better.

"Thus," I continued, "before we can truly begin to learn about new charms, you should know that they have little in common with powers, as you think of them. Powers are largely static, singular impressive feats that parahumans can perform without any understanding of their underlying mechanics. You possess no such limitation, but neither do you benefit from the shortcuts it offers."

Taylor raised her hand, her expression turning slightly sheepish.

I sighed. "Taylor, if you have a question, you're free to simply ask it so long as you don't interrupt me. I cannot fulfill all the duties a master owes to her student, after all, and so it seems pointless to stand on formalities."

Taylor raised an eyebrow. "Really? Does that mean I don't need to just kneel in one place while you talk?"

"That is to focus your mind," I said. "Besides, that wasn't really your question, was it?"

"Right," Taylor said. "Are charms just the same sort of thing that I've been calling techniques?"

I allowed myself a faint smile. "Yes and no. A charm is just a method of controlling and expressing essence to produce a specific effect, one which has seen common enough use to be recognized, refined, standardized, and named. Mastering a charm means practicing and perfecting it until it ceases to be a rote set of motions and becomes a part of your soul, as natural to you as breathing."

I gestured to one side and conjured a series of training dummies, the kind I'd used as both a student and a teacher. They were each made from a semi-transparent material, which offered enough contrast to define their individual features while also revealing a network of glowing green lines woven throughout their body, mimicking the layout of a person's essence channels.

"Like many chosen of the Dawn," I continued, "you mastered the Iron Fists Technique as your first charm. It is a potent ability, one that can serve a back-alley pugilist just as easily as a master martial artist. The technique itself is beautifully simple, requiring only that you channel essence into whichever limb you are striking or blocking with. As a feat of essence manipulation, it's about as simple as making a fist."

To demonstrate, I struck at the first dummy and willed it to react as if it had been hit by the charm in question. Its chest immediately caved in from the force of the blow, essence channels growing dark as it 'died' from the wound.

Taylor hissed. "Fuck. I could've really hurt someone that way."

"Language," I said, shaking my head. "That aside, you're correct. Even a technique this simple can be more than sufficient for ending mortal is the risk taken by any who choose to oppose you, and the sooner you come to accept this, the better."

Taylor dropped her gaze. "I'll just have to hold back even more, then. I don't want to kill anyone."

"And what about Lung?" I asked. "What about those who threaten your loved ones? Your sentiments are noble, but dishonesty and willful ignorance do you no favors."

"Fine," Taylor said, shoulders slumping, "I don't want to kill anyone accidentally. Is that better?"

"Much," I said, turning to the second dummy. "Now, unlike Fists of Iron, Heaven Thunder Hammer requires actually shaping the essence before unleashing it. You must imbue it with the idea of force, eager motion barely suppressed, such that it surges into your foe at the slightest touch."

I struck the second dummy in the same place as the first. This time, golden light flowed out from my fist and through the dummy's torso for a half-second before the whole thing flew backwards and crashed against the wall, breaking to pieces in the process.

Taylor grinned. "I love that move. Er, technique. Charm? Charm."

I nodded. "Heaven Thunder Hammer has always been popular for both its power and flexibility. If you like, I can instruct you in a number of supplementary arts developed to further enhance its effectiveness. For now, though, I want to show you a charm that has very little in common with these feats of martial prowess. It's an ability so ubiquitous that almost any being capable of channeling essence can master it to some degree."

I gestured to the third dummy, causing the blue light of its essence channels to shift into gold. Slowly but surely, pulses of light began emanating outwards from its core, starting out concentrated but growing steadily more diffuse as they moved to its extremities.

"This is the Ox-Body Technique, a series of basic meditations and physical exercises designed to enhance an Exalt's ability to endure harm. The technique draws essence out from your spiritual core and gradually infuses it into your body in a series of thin layers. Over time, the practice serves to harden your flesh, reinforce your bones, sheath your organs in a protective web of essence, and imbue you with greater energy and vitality."

I willed the dummy to grow slightly more transparent, so as to better display the internal changes taking place.

"Even a novice Solar fresh from their second breath can learn the basics of this technique in a matter of days, and begin seeing the benefits after only a week or two. Many Solars leave it there, but those who wish to excel in combat continue to practice their Ox-Body Technique through the centuries, even though each new tier of resilience requires exponentially more effort to reach. Through this slow buildup of power, some Exalts manage to become strong enough to laugh off any wound less lethal than total decapitation."

I snapped my fingers towards the dummy, causing the golden light to cease pulsing and dim back to blue. I struck it with the Iron Fist Technique, showing how force sufficient to inflict a mortal blow now only caused a mild bruise. I then struck with Heaven Thunder Hammer, and while the dummy still flew backwards at an impressive speed, it did more damage to the wall than vice-versa. .

"So what you're saying," Taylor replied, "is that this is a way to make myself tougher that doesn't actually need me to draw on my essence in the fight. That sounds incredibly useful. Can you teach it to me?"

"I can," I said, "but you've already picked up on the basics by yourself. Mostly, what I can do is teach you to perform these techniques more efficiently. Keep in mind, however, that while this dream world can provide excellent demonstrations, actually training here accomplishes nothing. Reality here is too malleable; your success or failure would be determined entirely by your expectations, rather than your actual execution. Thus, I'm focusing on teaching you theory in the hopes that you can apply it in the waking world."

"Of course," Taylor said. "I'll find the time somehow. In the meantime, can I ask you a question that isn't really about charms?"

I nodded. I could feel this discussion coming, like a kernel of unrest in Taylor's mind slowly rising to the surface. Better to get it over with as soon as possible.

Taylor nodded, and visibly steeled herself. "Okay, so, are you familiar with the saying 'power corrupts?'"

"'And absolute power corrupts absolutely,'" I finished. "Yes, though only because you are. I don't think it was a phrase we had much need for in my time, more's the pity."

"Well, I was talking with one of the other, um, guides," Taylor continued, "the one with the broken sword, and she was trying to show me just how powerful I could potentially become. It was incredible, but also kinda scary."

I nodded for her to continue. In truth, my own memories of my past incarnation suggested that I'd surpassed the height of their power many times over; I hadn't learned nearly as quickly, but I'd had literally thousands of years in which to practice. That wasn't something Taylor needed to hear now, though, not when she was already afraid of what she believed to be the limits of her power.

"I asked her if that kind of power might corrupt me, but she couldn't really answer."

I sighed. "Taylor, little Daystar, I will do the best I can to answer your question, but I need you to try and understand something. I ruled as a Solar Exalt for over four millenia. If I were alive today, I would have Exalted just before humans in this world began to tame horses, only a few centuries after your oldest recorded history. If you want to know whether I was a good ruler or a tyrant, the truth is that I was both, and much more besides."

As I spoke, new images began to appear throughout the great practice hall, all of them images of my current form, but in different stages of life. Some were dressed in the finest silks, or armor of shining Orichalcum, while others wore plainspun robes or the ragged garments of wasteland scavengers.

"Once, when I believed that true leadership required complete detachment, I went two centuries without ever seeing even a single one of my subjects. Another time I left a regent on my throne and went to live amongst my people as a beggar for five generations. I've had enough people put to death that their bodies could fill the streets of this city dozens deep, and even at the time I only believed that some of them deserved it. I have crushed rebellions with an iron fist, and I have led revolutions to retake my crown from usurpers. I've done more good and more evil than you can possibly comprehend. If you wish to understand my life, then, you must do so not as an individual, but on the scale of a nation."

When I finished, the room had filled from wall to wall with visions of us, showing every possible expression, every conceivable attitude. At some point, Taylor had stood and began walking through their ranks, scrutinizing each in turn. All of them were us, and yet not, purest abjection, that which was both self and anti-self. Even I found it uncomfortable, and I had lived every moment of it.

The images began to fade out, slowly, until only one was left. Of all the images of my past self, it was by far the worst. Its eyes shone with perfect serenity, and its face seemed unmarred by even the least speck of concern. A faint smile just curled the very edges of its mouth. I might have called the expression peaceful, even beatific, if I didn't remember the crimes I had committed while wearing it.

"This is who I became by the end," I said, carefully, cautiously. "The person I died as. Here, you see, is the face of someone who is so secure in the idea of her own perfection that she need no longer even consider the consequences of her actions. She can indulge any urge or passing whim with a clear conscience, because if it wasn't the right thing to do, surely the desire would not have formed within her. Such a grand irony, that one of the most powerful beings in Creation was incapable of something so easy as doubting herself."

Taylor looked at her own sweetly smiling face with growing horror. "You could have done anything, thinking like that."

"Whatever you're imagining," I said, "I probably did worse. It is a small but welcome mercy that so many of my memories of that time are so fragmented."

Taylor wrenched her gaze away, looking like she was going to be sick, so I allowed the last image to fade.

"If that's who you were at the end," she said, "why aren't you like that now?"

I shrugged. "It's hard to say. Part of it is likely thanks to the greater perspective granted by viewing one's own death. Part of it could be the way that bits of your own memory and personality have shored up the gaps in mine. Perhaps the Exaltation failed to carry on those parts of me that were irredeemable, or perhaps that overwhelming arrogance could not exist deprived of the power that fueled it."

"In other words," Taylor said, "you don't know, and you can't really tell me how to avoid it."

"No," I shook my head, "I can't. Even if I could, though, I'm not sure I'm the one you should listen to. I failed my own ideals, my subjects, my entire world. I will teach you everything I can, but in the end you must learn to surpass me. You must do better."

Taylor gave a strained and joyless laugh. "She said the same thing, that I had to do better. Do you also expect to kill and Endbringer with my bare hands before I'm out of college?"

I reached down and offered her my hand. "And why shouldn't one of my students be able to take on all three singlehandedly?"

She rolled her eyes when she caught my faint smile, and let me pull her to her feet.

"No," "I continued, "I have no such expectations. I've learned that, for all our power, we Chosen of Sol Invictus are quite terrible at predicting what kind of challenge we'll face in our times. For now, though, I think a different sort of instruction is in order. Instead of studying under the invincible warrior, how would you like to learn at the shoulder of one of the greatest culinarians ever to grace Creation?"

Taylor's smile became a little more genuine. It wouldn't help as much to prepare her for the trials ahead, but I didn't want to see her crushed by the burden of our power before she could grow strong enough to bear it.

A/N: Second of three echo interludes. Next up will be another short bit on Thursday, then one last interlude on the weekend, followed by 4.1 next Thursday.

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WinterWombat

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Yesterday at 11:46 PM

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#5,627

May 5th, 2011

The Kite was possibly the coolest thing I'd ever made. Despite the name, the little drone looked more like a jellyfish than anything else, a squished half-sphere of diaphanous fabric trailing a small tangle of loose tendrils. It was the first functional drone I'd managed to make without a single solid part, after I discovered I could replace clunky lithium ion batteries with a hundred meters of hair-thin capacitor thread. It moved completely silently, selectively manipulating the permeability of its outer membrane to do some seriously nifty things with air pressure. It's entire outer surface served as both a high-resolution camera and light-bending stealth screen, and the trailing tendrils had audio pickup on par with a studio quality microphone.

For these reasons and more, though, the Kite was also kinda pathetic. It could float unseen through the corridors of the PRT building with ease, but only at a snail's pace. It couldn't carry anything heavier than a paperclip, and a slow-moving ceiling fan could shred it into so much confetti on contact. It couldn't even muster enough force to push an elevator button; I'd had to park it in one of the lifts for the last three three hours in hope that one of the troopers would come by and ride it to the right floor.

Three hours of glancing back and forth between my workbench and my tablet, unable to concentrate on either. Despite the deadlines looming on the horizon, and the promised consequences for failure, I didn't manage to do much more than keep my looms fed. Material levels were still my biggest bottleneck, so I was technically making progress, but I doubted that Lung would see it that way if he caught me wasting time on an unsanctioned operation.

I glanced at the pad again and almost jumped out of my seat when I saw that the lift had just arrived at the Parahuman Detention level. I had just barely enough time to steer the Kite out through the elevator doors before they closed. From there, it only took me five minutes to find the right cell, then another fifteen before I felt confident I wouldn't be interrupted by a patrolling guard.

I guided the Kite up to the Plexiglas wall of the containment cell, switched the light-bending polymers of its inner layer into chromatophore mode, and spelled out a message over the drone's surface.

HEY MINH

IT'S SAM

The cell held everything I'd expected to see in a cape prison, which was to say, not much. Minh sat on the room's small cot, wearing typical orange prison scrubs, though I was happy to see that the PRT had at least let them keep their mask. Other than that, they looked like crap, with one arm hung in a cloth, a plaster cast on their other wrist, and a sturdy-looking articled brace fastened around one knee. It took them a couple minutes to notice my message, but the second they did, they shot to their feet and started shambling towards the drone.

"What the? Sam? Wait, can you even…"

I CAN HEAR YOU FINE ^_^

The Kite's audio sensors picked up Minh's relieved sigh even through the Plexiglas.

"What's going on?" they whispered. "Are you actually here? Are the others?"

I frowned. Now that we were actually in contact, I realized how little info I actually had to pass on.

NO. JUST A DRONE. NO RESCUE.

I considered that for a moment, then made a slight adjustment.

NO RESCUE YET

Minh leaned forward and pressed their masked forehead against the Plexiglas wall. "That's fine, Sam. They're not treating me too badly, and I don't have to press any swords to anyone's throats. It's almost like a vacation."

I gave them a sad little grin, even though they couldn't see it. The Kite's software was too rudimentary for proper image display, which left me in text-only mode.

BOSS NOT HAPPY

"Is he ever?" Minh chuckled. "What's he going to do to me here? Now that the PRT have me in their clutches, I can just tell them everything and ride out the rest of this war in Witness Protection somewhere."

I felt my breath catch in my throat. Were they actually going to just...leave?

IF THAT'S WHAT YOU REALLY WANT

"Whoa, whoa," Minh waved with their one functional arm. "Just a bad joke."

I glared at them through the tablet screen.

NOT FUNNY

They grinned. "A little funny. I'm not going to leave you and Priya behind. Ever. I'll find a way out of here, just as soon as I've got at least two fully functional limbs. Your fancy costume didn't stop Daystar from snapping my bones like toothpicks."

I rolled my eyes.

:|

NOT MY FAULT

ARMOR WEAVE MEANT FOR BULLETS

NOT FOR GRABBY BRUTES

"Something to work on for the next version," Minh said. "Anyways, don't worry about me. I'm not in any danger here, and if I need to get out, I'll find a way. You and Priya just take care of yourselves, okay?"

I groaned, and sunk down in my chair until I was almost parallel with the ground. Of course they were trying to reassure me, even though they were the one in jail right now.

JUST BE CAREFUL DUMBASS

AND WATCH OUT FOR DAYSTAR

RUMORS SAY SHE AND TATTLETALE ARE CLOSE

I hesitated for a few seconds. Did passing on PRT gossip count as breaking the unwritten rules? I decided to assume it did not.

MAYBE EVEN CLOSE CLOSE.

Minh blinked at my last message. "Oh. Fuck."

YEAH

G2G GUARD COMING

GOOD LUCK

I piloted the Kite back into one of the elevator cabs before setting it to automatic return mode. Now that I knew Minh was holding on alright, I could get back to work. I had refinements to implement for Priya's stealth suit and my combat rig, plans for a new large-scale loom, and some early ideas for how I wanted to build the Kite v2. Lung claimed he only needed a few days to put together a rescue plan, and I needed all this new kit to be ready when he was.

That was the whole point of joining the ABB, after all; more resources, more connections, and some serious heavy-hitters to back us up in a pinch. Minh getting captured was our first serious setback, and thus the first real test of this partnership. If Lung, Oni Lee, and Bakuda came through with this, it'd prove that we could make a solid team. If not…

I reached under my workbench for a hidden compartment almost perfectly flush with the surface; it would have been impossible to find if not for my power's innate sense for micro-scale seams and weaves. Tapping in the security code with a wire-laced fingernail, I coaxed the compartment open and pulled out a self-contained exotic materials loom the size of a hockey-puck. The shimmering, writhing nanotech filaments inside still hurt to look at directly, but I could see that the storage spool was more than half full.

I grinned as I returned the device to its hiding spot. If Lung didn't deliver on his end of the bargain, he'd see just how little hold he actually had over any of us.

A/N: Here's a little look into the lives of two as-of-yet unexplored antagonists. I can't say for sure if the next update will be the final echo interlude or 4.1, but either way, both are coming together.

Tinkers are honestly some of my favorite capes to design. It's great fun to try and think up some interesting but restrictive specialty, and then look for ways that they could try to skirt the edges of those limitations. I usually don't bother following a lot of the guidelines you can find online from Wildbow about what kinds of trigger produce what kind of power, but the various ideas he's given for different Tinker subtypes always struck me as both cool and useful.

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